The end of the copper phone line: what the POTS sunset means for a business.

The short version

"POTS sunset" sounds like a date. It is not one. There is no federal day on which copper phone lines stop working, in the United States or in Canada. What exists instead is a set of separate permissions that a carrier collects one wire centre at a time: permission to stop selling a service to new customers, permission to stop providing it to existing ones, and the right to pull out the copper underneath. In 2026 the FCC made all three faster and cheaper to obtain.

For a business the practical meaning is simple. Your phone number is portable and is yours to move. Your copper line is the carrier's, and the carrier now has a clear, quick federal path to retire it. The lines most likely to cause trouble are not the ones people talk on: they are the alarm panel, the fire alarm communicator, the elevator phone, the fax and the card terminal, which were built around properties of a copper pair that a replacement service does not always reproduce.

This piece sets out the rules as they now read, what the two largest US incumbents say in their own filings, the Canadian position, what breaks, and a migration plan. A companion article, How to replace copper phone lines for business, has the printable line inventory and test sheets.

Three different things carriers call "the copper sunset"

Most confusion comes from treating three separate events as one. They have different rules, notice periods and audiences.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

The third row surprises people. The copper-retirement notice is aimed at other carriers. The FCC said so in plain words in March 2026: "Neither Section 251(c)(5) nor our implementing rules impose end-user notice obligations. Rather, carriers provide such notices to end users as a matter of practice."6 The protection a business customer has is the Section 214 process, which applies when retiring the copper would also end a service the customer is buying. The FCC was explicit that removing the filing requirement "does not absolve incumbent LECs of their obligation under Section 214(a) to obtain Commission authorization for a copper retirement ... that also results in a service discontinuance."6

Nor can the FCC stop a retirement. Asked to forbid it where competitors still depend on copper, the Commission answered that the statute "established a notice-based network change disclosure process, and the Commission thus has no authority to prohibit copper retirements."6

The rules as they read today

The statute. Section 214(a) of the Communications Act: "No carrier shall discontinue, reduce, or impair service to a community, or part of a community, unless and until there shall first have been obtained from the Commission a certificate that neither the present nor future public convenience and necessity will be adversely affected thereby."1

Copper retirement notice (47 CFR 51.325 and 51.333). A copper retirement is "the removal or disabling of copper loops, subloops, or the feeder portion of such loops or subloops" or their replacement with fibre-to-the-home or fibre-to-the-curb loops.2 The incumbent must post public notice (an industry forum, an industry publication or its own website is enough)6 and serve direct notice on interconnecting carriers, 911 service providers and the carriers that support 911 networks in the area "at least 90 days prior to implementation", or 15 days where the copper is "not being used to provision services to any customers".3 Force majeure events and other circumstances outside the carrier's control, which the rule says include "federal, state, or local municipal mandates and unintentional damage", shorten or suspend those periods.3

Discontinuance (47 CFR 63.71). Before filing, the carrier must notify "all affected customers" in writing (email counts only if the customer previously agreed to email notices), and the notice must carry the FCC's standard statement that objections are due "no later than 15 days after the Commission releases public notice of the proposed discontinuance."5 Since 15 October 2026 every domestic discontinuance application, from dominant and non-dominant carriers alike, is granted automatically on the 31st day unless the FCC says otherwise; dominant carriers used to wait 60 days.67

The replacement test. A "technology transition" is the replacement of "a wireline TDM-based voice service with a service using a different technology or medium".4 Such a discontinuance gets the 31-day treatment only if the carrier certifies that, "in every location throughout the affected service area", at least one of five things is available: facilities-based interconnected VoIP; facilities-based mobile wireless at 5 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up or better; a voice service funded by the FCC's modernised high-cost programmes; the carrier's own alternative voice service with "substantially similar levels of network performance and availability"; or a widely available third-party service meeting the same standard.5 The order adds that a bundle counts (voice need not be sold on its own) but "broadband-only service would not qualify".6

Grandfathering (47 CFR 63.71(j)). No application is needed to stop selling legacy voice, data below 25/3 Mbps, or VoIP provisioned over copper; the carrier only has to tell existing customers, with an approximate date for the eventual discontinuance and a statement about alternatives.5 Where a wholesale provider discontinues a legacy voice service that someone else resells, the reseller need not file at all and must only tell its customers "as soon as practicable".5 That last provision matters to many small businesses, for reasons explained in the next section.

Preemption. Once the FCC has authorised a discontinuance, "states may not enforce any law, regulation, or other requirement that on its face or in practical terms requires the carrier to continue providing" the service, including "conditions that purport to be technology neutral". The Commission declined to rule on any specific state law.6

What the 2026 order kept. Discontinuing a service that carries 911 traffic still needs a point of contact given to 911 authorities at least 90 days ahead,5 and the Bureau can still "remove the application from streamlined processing" if it has public-interest concerns.6

How the rules got here, 2016 to 2026

The 2026 order ends a decade-long arc, in five steps.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Why the 2019 forbearance matters to a small office. Many small businesses never bought their lines from the incumbent. They bought them from a competitive carrier or a reseller, which in turn rented the incumbent's copper loop or resold its service. FCC 19-72 described exactly those two arrangements, "two narrow regulatory obligations ... to give competitors a foothold in the market for local telephone service using a legacy technology known as Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) over traditional copper wires", and forbore from both.9 It kept a transition precisely because competitors had "contractual obligations with new or existing customers, including small businesses".9 One incumbent told the FCC that competitors "rely overwhelmingly today on commercially negotiated UNE-P replacement services rather than statutory resale".9

The consequence, in our reading: if your bill comes from a reseller, the copper underneath is still the incumbent's, the incumbent's retirement notice goes to the reseller rather than to you, and the reseller's own duty under the current rule is to tell you "as soon as practicable".5 Ask your provider directly whose copper your lines run on.

What the carriers say, in their own documents

AT&T. In a press release filed with the SEC on 3 December 2024, AT&T said it "is actively working to exit its legacy copper network operations across the large majority of its wireline footprint by the end of 2029."28 Its 2025 annual report gives the scale: "At December 31, 2025, we had 2.1 million customer location switched access lines in service ... compared to 2.7 million customer location switched access lines in service ... in the prior year."29 That is a fall of about a fifth in a year.

Verizon. Verizon's notices page30 shows that in August and September 2026 it posted copper retirement notices covering wire centres in more than a dozen states. A representative one, for New Jersey, dated 8 September 2026, names 62 wire centres with an implementation date "on or after December 10, 2026". It says Verizon "intends to retire the copper facilities at all remaining locations" in them, that it "will discontinue services offered over these copper facilities pursuant to FCC rules before retiring the facilities", and, in the sentence a business should read twice: "Verizon may require customers and interconnecting entities to migrate services off of copper facilities well before the copper retirement implementation date."31

States still matter, for now. In June 2024 the California commission rejected AT&T's request to withdraw as carrier of last resort, finding that AT&T "failed to demonstrate the availability of replacement providers willing and able to serve as COLR". The same release notes that California's rules "are technology-neutral" and "do not prevent AT&T from retiring copper facilities".32 A state duty to serve is a duty to provide a phone service, not a copper one. And the FCC's 2026 preemption language reaches exactly the kind of state condition that "purport[s] to be technology neutral" while requiring a carrier to keep a federally discontinued service.6 How that collision resolves is a question for the courts; we have not tracked any challenge and make no prediction.

Canada

Canada has no copper-retirement rule comparable to the FCC's. A CRTC commissioner put it plainly in a 2024 dissent: regulators elsewhere "have generally established frameworks by which to supervise" copper decommissioning, and "We, by contrast, have not." He went on: "Here, copper decommissioning has proceeded without active regulatory oversight. When competitive distortions or consumer vulnerabilities arise ..., it falls to affected competitors or consumers to seek regulatory recourse."16 That is one commissioner's dissent, not a finding of the Commission, but we found no CRTC framework that contradicts it.

What Canada does have is an obligation to serve, and it protects homes more than businesses. When the CRTC forbore from regulating retail local service in 2006, it kept the incumbents' duty to offer stand-alone residential lines but held that "for business customers generally market forces will prove adequate to protect their interests such that the Commission does not need to mandate the provision of business stand-alone PES."17 In 2011 it allowed the residential duty in forborne exchanges to be met with "mobile wireless voice services".18 In 2020 it refused a TELUS proposal to drop the obligation altogether, a proposal TELUS based on the claim that "alternatives to copper wireline voice service are now ubiquitous in Canada", and retained it "for not only the large ILECs, but for all the ILECs". The same decision noted "barriers to switching for small and medium-sized businesses and organizations, such as equipment purchases".19

The carriers are moving anyway, and their own pages are direct. Bell tells small-business customers on copper that "a repair will require you to transfer your services to our new fibre-to-the-business network", and that after the shutdown date, "If you do not take action by this date, your services will be disconnected and any Bell email, business phone number and saved voicemail messages may be lost." It adds that business phone service, "including access to 9-1-1 emergency services, will not work during a power outage without a battery backup."20 TELUS says that inside its copper-retirement boundaries, "transferring your existing TELUS services to PureFibre, or a wireless solution, is mandatory."21

Our reading: a Canadian business on incumbent copper should expect the move on the carrier's timetable, triggered by a letter or by a fault, with fewer regulatory checkpoints than in the US. Bell's warning that a business phone number "may be lost" is the clearest statement we found anywhere of why the number and the line must be handled separately. Canadian porting rules, including the CRTC's intervals, are on porting in Canada.

What actually breaks when the copper goes

A copper pair does three things a replacement does not do automatically. It is powered from the exchange, so it keeps working in a power cut. It carries analog tones end to end, so a modem in an alarm panel or card terminal can talk to a modem at the other end. And it is a fixed, known circuit that fire and elevator codes were written around. The FCC's consumer guides say the first plainly: copper service "typically continues to work during power outages", while fibre, cable and wireless "usually need backup power".12 They also list the equipment to check: "Medical alert systems", "Security and alarm systems", "Fax machines" and "Credit card machines".13

Two federal facts matter. First, the 2016 requirement that "replacement services [ ] be compatible with these devices" sunset in 2025,6 and in March 2026 the FCC declined an alarm-industry request to require replacements to carry alarm signalling (a G.711 call with RFC 2833 disabled) to alarm receivers, saying only that "we encourage carriers to ensure their IP networks are appropriately configured so as to prevent alarm signaling failures".6 Second, the federal backup-power rule is gone. It only ever covered residential service, required providers to offer a battery option of "a minimum of eight hours" (and a 24-hour option),14 and it "has sunset by operation of law", removed from the rules in 2026.15 For a business line, battery backup is your purchase and your design decision.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Fire alarm communicators. NFPA 72 is the US fire alarm code. In its 2025 edition, as amended by a tentative interim amendment, a digital alarm communicator transmitter (DACT) on a phone line needs a second channel: a private radio system or a means meeting the code's general transmission rules. A second telephone line is allowed only where neither is available at the premises and "The AHJ approves the arrangement."22 The amendment adds that the code is "not intended to prevent a system using a DACT from employing two transmission channels from a managed facilities-based voice network (MFVN)".22 We read that amendment in full; we did not read the printed 2025 edition, which NFPA shows only after login. Local authorities can go further. San Francisco's fire department, applying the 2025 edition from 1 January 2026, prohibits POTS or cable lines with a DACT for all new communicators, requires cellular or mesh radio, rejects IP communicators as the single means because of the code's 24-hour secondary power requirement, and requires an approved fire watch if an existing DACT loses its phone service.23 The answer depends on your jurisdiction's edition and authority; get it from them, not from a phone company's brochure.

Elevator phones. Elevator codes do not mandate copper, but they set performance requirements that a careless swap breaks. Ontario's safety authority, applying CSA B44, says its rules "do not mandate nor exclude any one telephone technology", then lists what any technology must do: calls go to a staffed location, are re-routed if not acknowledged in 45 seconds, never go to an automated answering system, have four hours of backup power and a daily end-to-end check. It warns that a phone that met those rules on POTS "may not be capable of meeting these requirements if switched to a VoIP service".24 In the US the code is ASME A17.1, which we could not read directly. North Carolina's State Construction Office warns that the state Department of Labor "may determine that a change in telephone service triggers a full communications upgrade, compliant with the 2019 edition of ASME A17.1", an edition that "requires both text and video communications".25 Budget for that possibility before the line is changed, not after.

Fax. The standard for fax over IP networks is ITU-T T.38.26 Ask whether a replacement line supports it end to end, or retire the machine for an email-to-fax service.

Card terminals. A payment processor puts it bluntly: "VoIP services could experience issues performing transactions", and "If you are using a dial-only payment device with VoIP communication, you may need to locate an analog phone line".27 We think the copper sunset is the moment to replace a dial-up terminal rather than hunt for an analog line.

Our view: the number is portable, the line is not

Most migration advice blurs one distinction. A business phone line is two things bolted together: a number, which customers, signs, directories and search listings point at, and an access line, the physical circuit that delivers calls to the building. The copper sunset ends the second, not the first.

The FCC's porting guide is direct about the number: if you stay in the same geographic area "you can keep your existing phone number", and porting "can be done between wireline, IP and wireless providers". Once you request service from a new company, "your old company cannot refuse to port your number, even if you owe money".11 It adds two cautions: "Do not terminate your service with your existing company before initiating new service with another company", and "some rural wireline service providers may obtain waivers for the porting requirement from state authorities".11 Our page on porting your existing number covers the mechanics in both countries.

What you cannot port are the physical properties of the copper pair: power delivered from the exchange, an analog path that carries modem tones unmodified, and a fixed location the 911 system already knows. Whatever replaces the line has to re-create them deliberately.

Three conclusions follow. They are our opinions, resting on the rules quoted above.

1. Move the number on your schedule, not the carrier's. A grandfathering notice is the moment to act, not the discontinuance notice. Under the current rules a discontinuance can be granted 31 days after public notice, with a 15-day window to object.5 Porting is quick when the paperwork is right; finding the account, authorised name and billing address on a line untouched for fifteen years is not.
2. Separate the number from any single access line. The main number is what callers dial; it does not need to live on the same circuit as the alarm panel or ring a handset on a desk. Once it is ported to a service that answers and routes calls over the network, the building's access can change again (fibre, cable, fixed wireless) without the number moving a second time. This is the reasoning behind the kind of number-plus-menu service we run; the principle holds whichever provider you choose.
3. Do not port the machine lines with the main number. The alarm communicator, the elevator phone and the fax each have their own number, often unknown to anyone in the office, and the equipment behind them needs its own replacement path (see above). Decide for each whether the number matters at all, and handle them separately.

Emergency calling changes with the line. A replacement service has its own 911 arrangements, and US dispatchable-location rules and Canada's 9-1-1 rules for VoIP apply to it. The FCC's porting guide also warns that during a landline-to-wireless port "911 operators may not be able to call you back if disconnected".11 Emergency calling sets out the rules in both countries.

A migration plan for a small business

For a small office or shop with a handful of copper lines, ordered so that the irreversible step comes last. The companion article has a printable inventory sheet: How to replace copper phone lines for business.

1. Find every line you pay for. Take the last bill from every telephone provider and list each number and circuit on it. Then walk the building: alarm panel, fire alarm control panel, elevator cab, gate or door entry, fax, card terminals, postage meter, any modem. Match each device to a number. Expect at least one line nobody can explain.
2. Find out whose copper it is. Ask your provider, in writing, whether each line runs on its own facilities or on the incumbent's, and whether it has received a grandfathering, discontinuance or copper retirement notice for your address. If you buy from a reseller, remember its own duty is to pass a wholesale discontinuance on "as soon as practicable".5
3. Read every notice for its date and its docket. A grandfathering notice must carry an approximate date for the eventual discontinuance.5 A discontinuance notice must tell you how to comment, and the comment window is 15 days from the FCC's public notice.5 If the line serves life-safety equipment and you have no working replacement, file a comment: it is the only lever the process gives you, and it puts the problem on the record. In Canada, expect the carrier's own letter to be the main notice; we found no CRTC comment step for retail copper retirement.
4. Classify each line. Voice lines people talk on; the main number; machine lines (alarm, fire, elevator, fax, payment); and lines nobody uses. Each class has a different replacement.
5. Move the main number first. Port it to a service that does not depend on the copper, and do not cancel anything until the port is confirmed complete.11 Test it from an outside phone: it rings, the menu plays, after-hours routing works, voicemail reaches someone.
6. Hand each machine line to its owner. The alarm monitoring company, the fire alarm service contractor, the elevator maintenance contractor and the payment processor each have a replacement path for their own equipment. Get it in writing, with the date their replacement will be live and tested, and for fire and elevator lines get the inspection authority's sign-off where your jurisdiction requires one.
7. Re-create what the copper gave you for free. Battery backup for anything that must work in a power cut, a registered 911 location for every voice line, confirmed with the new provider before the old line goes.
8. Cancel last. Only when every number has been ported or deliberately abandoned and every device has passed a live test, cancel the remaining copper lines.

Timing, in our view: start the day you receive a grandfathering notice, and aim to finish before any discontinuance is filed. Under the 2026 rules an application can be granted automatically 31 days after the FCC's public notice of it, with comments due in the first 15, and the customer notice need only go out by the filing date;56 a month is not long enough to replace a fire alarm communicator, schedule an elevator inspection and port a number in sequence.

What we could not verify

• Codes behind logins. We did not read the printed 2025 edition of NFPA 72 or any edition of ASME A17.1, because neither is freely viewable without an account. The fire and elevator points above rest on NFPA's published amendment, and on what fire and elevator authorities say about the codes.
• Recent CRTC orders. Several 2026 CRTC orders on Bell's legacy and copper-based business services appear in search results, but neither the CRTC site nor an archived copy could be read, so we do not cite them. Canadian readers should check the CRTC's decisions list for their own carrier.
• Court challenges. We have not tracked whether FCC 26-19 has been challenged in court, or how any state has responded to its preemption finding.
• Dates for your address. No public source gives a date for a particular building. AT&T's 2029 aim is company-wide and qualified ("large majority"); Verizon's notices name wire centres, not addresses. Your carrier's letter is the only authority for your line.