By David Shepardson<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – AT&T on Wednesday filed suit against California officials seeking a court order declaring it does not have \u200cto continue offering traditional copper wire phone service to new customers \u200cas it vowed to spend $19 billion on modern telecom services.<\/p>\n
California requires the U.S. wireless carrier to \u200bspend $1 billion annually to maintain a century-old telephone network that few use, AT&T said, saying the network now serves just 3% of households in AT&T\u2019s California territory.<\/p>\n
AT&T’s suit named the California Public Utilities Commission and the state attorney general. The CPUC \u200cdid not immediately respond to \u2060a request for comment.<\/p>\n
AT&T said it is committing to investing $19 billion in California as it works to connect more than \u20604 million additional households and businesses across California by 2030 and added IP-based networks are far more reliable and efficient.<\/p>\n
AT&T also Wednesday asked the Federal Communications Commission for \u200bpermission to \u200bdiscontinue traditional phone service in parts of \u200bCalifornia where it has faster, \u200cmore reliable service available. It also filed a petition with the FCC to declare that California\u2019s rules that effectively require AT&T to power, repair and sell traditional phone service, even after the FCC has authorized the service to be phased out, are preempted by federal standards.<\/p>\n
AT&T added that transitioning from copper will save \u200can estimated 300 million kilowatt-hours annually by \u200b2030 or the equivalent of eliminating emissions from \u200b17 million gallons of gasoline. The \u200bcompany added that California has already suffered about 2,000 outages \u200cfrom copper thefts this year and \u200bit struggles to find \u200breplacement parts.<\/p>\n
The federal government and virtually all states where AT&T historically offered copper-wire service “have now eliminated outdated regulatory obstacles” allowing AT&T to begin powering \u200bdown its old network \u200cand increasing its investments in modern communication technologies, the company said \u200bin its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in southern California.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby David Shepardson; Editing by Franklin Paul)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By David Shepardson WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – AT&T on Wednesday filed suit against California officials seeking a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[34899,7,9,8,130645,135299,135298],"class_list":["post-325231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-att","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-phone-service","tag-traditional-copper-wire","tag-traditional-phone-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}