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Upon hearing her husband’s call for help, Cynthia Halliday came flying upstairs. He was rushing toward the outdoor deck, gasping for air. He was having a heart attack.

Halliday held him and dialed 911 with her cellphone. The dispatcher answered, but within seconds, she said, the call disconnected due to poor reception. Halliday screamed for help, loud enough for her next-door neighbor Larry Williams to hear and dial from his copper landline. This time, it got through.

Halliday’s husband did not survive. But on that day in 2018, Halliday became convinced that copper landlines were her best shot at getting help during emergencies, especially where she lives in Hacienda, a tight-knit community deep in the rural forests of Northern California.

Those landlines, however, are what AT&T — the largest copper landline provider in California — is pushing to retire nationwide.

As California’s largest “carrier of last resort,” AT&T is required by law to provide basic phone service, typically copper landlines, to any Californian who asks for it, with lower-income customers qualifying for a discount. It provides 75% of the state’s last-resort phone service, accounting for about 500,000 Californians and 5% of all its California customers.

Subsidies to support copper landlines have declined sharply. Critics say AT&T wants to shed them to avoid their billion-dollar annual cost and boost profits with lucrative services like fiber.

For the past two years, AT&T has tried unsuccessfully to bow out of that obligation in many areas of the state, spending heavily to influence state regulations and laws. This year, it spent at least $4.5 million on lobbying as it tried and failed to pass a bill that would have allowed AT&T to cut copper services in certain areas in exchange for agreeing to expand its fiber services. Its industry ally, USTelecom, assembled a “grassroots” coalition to support the legislation, with more than 80% of coalition members having ties to AT&T, CalMatters found.

The company’s efforts to shed copper landlines show no signs of stopping. An ongoing process by the utilities regulators seeks to determine key components of the carrier of last resort requirements. And Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, an Inglewood Democrat, told CalMatters she intends to revive the bill that died this year.

It’s unclear just how many Californians would be impacted if AT&T gets its way. A map AT&T submitted to California utilities regulators as part of a failed 2023 effort marked 1,133 towns across 53 of California’s counties, including rural communities such as Hacienda, as territories the company sought to withdraw from.

AT&T said it only wants to pull out of communities with multiple alternatives, such as wireless and fixed broadband. It argued it’s not cost-effective to maintain expensive copper lines for many of its customers, the number of which has dwindled over the years. Doing away with the obligation would free up money to invest in more advanced technologies, such as fiber optics, it said.

“No Californian will be left without reliable phone service in their homes, including 911 services,” said Terri Baca, vice president of legislative affairs at AT&T, at an April legislative hearing.

But critics say the reliability of those alternatives isn’t guaranteed, and that AT&T’s push would pad shareholders’ pockets at the expense of a lifeline for those communities, especially during power outages and natural disasters. Statewide, more than one million 911 calls are made each year over landlines, according to the state’s Office of Emergency Services.

If AT&T’s goal is to upgrade services, it should build them out before retiring copper, opponents argue.

“If they wanted to replace copper with fiber right now, there’s nothing stopping them,” said Phil Grosse, a Hacienda resident and the North Coast regional chair of the California Democratic Party’s rural caucus.

Phil Grosse looks for a cell signal in the Hacienda area of Sonoma County on Oct. 23, 2025. Photo by Chad Surmick for CalMatters

The debate has intensified in California in recent years, partly because it is a significant holdout in AT&T’s plan to abandon copper networks across the country.

Spokespeople for USTelecom, its coalition Californians for a Connected Future, and AT&T did not specify how they recruited coalition members or why most members had ties to AT&T. Instead, they sent general statements calling the state’s carrier of last resort obligation archaic.

“Our goal is to deliver the best possible experience to our customers, now and into the future,” said Megan Ketterer of AT&T.

Cara Duckworth, a spokesperson for USTelecom, told CalMatters “even if we answered all the questions I’m not sure we’d get a fair shake.”

“Many of our providers would love to no longer have to spend money maintaining old copper equipment and would much rather invest that money in next (generation) networks that better serve consumers,” she said.

Some rural Californians say they fear AT&T will eventually wear state lawmakers down to that goal.

“Rural communities don’t have the big money to compete with AT&T. That’s why we hire legislators to look out for us,” Grosse said in a June letter to state lawmakers.

‘Predictably unpredictable’

Kathy Yerger, 67, lives among redwoods so dense that wireless Internet providers have refused to service her Hacienda home.

“It would be like trying to find a golf ball in the sky,” she remembered one provider telling her. Another, upon learning her address, chuckled and told her “no, you are not on the list,” she said.

Although she has a cellphone, Yerger has learned not to rely on it.

“If I put the phone in the window and hope the stars line up and the trees don’t blow, yes I can (try to connect),” she said. “It’s predictably unpredictable.”

Like many of her neighbors, Yerger’s best — if not only — bet at communicating with the outside world is her copper landline. Even that line fails sometimes when water corrodes the old copper wires. But it’s still the most reliable option she has, especially during emergencies and natural disasters.

Hacienda resident Phil Grosse makes his way down single lane McPeak Road, past a fire warning sign that highlights the precarious nature of the living environment along the Russian River, in Sonoma County on Oct. 23, 2025. Photo by Chad Surmick for CalMatters

First: Phil Grosse studies emergency evacuation routes while meeting with Hacienda neighbors. Last: Historic flood levels are marked on a support beam on a bridge underneath Hacienda’s Westside Road in Sonoma County on Oct. 23, 2025. Photos by Chad Surmick for CalMatters

In Hacienda, frequent mudslides and floods during rainy winters have washed away homes, sparked power outages, and sometimes claimed lives. The 2020 Walbridge fire, which scorched more than 55,000 acres of Sonoma County, got within a quarter mile of Yerger’s house. The only notification was word of mouth from the local fire department deputies and a neighbor calling her landline, she said.

Few reliable alternatives remain during those disasters. Cellphone services, which many Californians rely on to receive emergency alerts, can quickly fail. Fiber optic lines, while more resilient, require backup power along the network and are expensive to install. Voice-over-Internet-Protocol phones, a landline alternative, depend on the internet and home electricity and thus fail during power outages.

The alternatives are so unreliable during emergencies that Hacienda residents created walking evacuation routes along the area’s ragged switchbacks. They set up their own walkie-talkie network, drilling weekly. They even discussed using bullhorns and sirens to alert each other if a wildfire comes through, Grosse said. The hope is to reach enough people for someone with a copper landline to call for help.

“There’s no copper fetish here,” Grosse said. “When a reliable alternative appears, I’d really be happy to give (it) up.”

A technology upgrade or a profit grab?

Underlying AT&T’s push to retire copper is money. Telecom companies previously received subsidies from state and federal governments for last-resort services, but those payments have been reduced or eliminated in recent decades. California, for example, reduced its subsidy fund from $400 million in 1996 to about $20 million currently, according to a USTelecom regulatory filing.

This leaves companies providing landlines with a larger share of the bill for maintaining such networks. For AT&T, that’s about $1 billion each year in California alone.Despite this, AT&T remains profitable. An October filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed a $9.7 billion profit so far this year. And fiber is one of its profit drivers, bringing in $2.2 billion, up nearly 17% from the same time last year.

“They’re looking for a way to boost profits,” said Ernesto Falcon, communications and broadband program manager for the California Public Advocates Office.“They can’t legally do that unless you get rid of (the carrier of last resort requirements).”

AT&T representatives have repeatedly insisted that the company’s efforts to pull out as a carrier of last resort are to modernize telecommunication. In public hearings, they promised that AT&T’s request would not threaten copper landlines in areas without other viable options.

So far, state regulators and lawmakers aren’t convinced.

The California Public Utilities Commission rejected a March 2023 petition by AT&T that would have allowed it to pull out copper lines only in service areas where customers have telephone service alternatives. The application claimed 99.7% of its customers had access to at least three alternatives, with 99.9% having access to at least two.

After the rejection, the company turned to the state Legislature, sponsoring bills to relinquish its obligation.

Last year, an AT&T-backed bill would have granted the company relief if it notified the commission of certain census blocks with no customers or with multiple phone service alternatives. The bill, authored by McKinnor, died without a hearing.

McKinnor reintroduced the measure as Assembly Bill 470 this spring. In its final form, the bill would have allowed AT&T to pull copper lines out of open spaces and “well served” areas — those with at least three other service providers — if it promised, among other requirements, to expand advanced fiber optics in six years to three times as many households as it is currently required to serve and to help its customers transition to other services.

The bill would have required the public utilities commission to map out well-served areas using the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Map and the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program — both tools to measure internet, not telephone, connectivity. The map was criticized by opponents of the bill, including the California Public Advocate’s Office, as not being an accurate representation of coverage.

“This bill does not leave any customer behind. This isn’t about taking something away, it’s about ensuring that we have a plan to migrate Californians to superior services,” Baca said in a July hearing.

McKinnor told CalMatters the measure was her “out of the box, progressive” way to get AT&T to pay for infrastructure upgrades instead of spending taxpayer dollars.

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First: A sign for McPeak Road is tacked onto a utility pole. Last: A Cal Fire emergency coordination map, which shows structures located in the Hacienda area, hangs in the window of Frank Patane’s barn in Sonoma County on Oct. 23, 2025. Photos by Chad Surmick for CalMatters

But critics say some areas, such as Hacienda, could count as well served while still lacking quality access. There’s no guarantee that other providers would offer reliable alternatives, and the legislation would not have required the fiber buildout to be in the same communities where AT&T seeks to pull out, they said. Many Hacienda households are listed on the federal broadband map as having four internet providers available — none of which are reliable, they said.

“I agree we need to have technology, but only to a point where you are not dropping service for people that are dependent on it,” said Kelli Mathia, immediate past president of the Odd Fellows Recreation Club in Guerneville, down the Russian River from Hacienda.

If AT&T is really trying to upgrade services, why must they pull out copper lines first? Halliday wondered.

But McKinnor said allowing AT&T to preemptively pull the lines is only fair.

“I believe in free enterprise,” she told CalMatters. “I can’t mandate a business to spend billions of dollars doing infrastructure and say, ‘Oh, maybe we will give you (the relief) at the end.’”

AT&T’s real goal is to boost its bottom line, said Regina Costa, a Hacienda resident and telecom policy director for The Utility Reform Network, which led opposition to the bill.

“What they really want is to get rid of customers that they do not think are profitable,” she said.

In a shareholder meeting last year, AT&T CEO John Stankey said getting customers off of copper lines allowed the company to “turn down” that service in “low utilization” and “low profitable” territories. “I can turn out the lights, walk away, take cost out of business,” he said.

AT&T’s web of connections

AT&T is already a political juggernaut in Sacramento.

Between 2015 and 2024, AT&T made nearly $3 million in campaign contributions to state lawmakers, according to an analysis of CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database. This year, it contributed nearly $300,000 to lawmakers’ campaign accounts as they considered its sponsored legislation, data from the California secretary of state’s office shows.

AT&T also reported giving five California lawmakers and two of their staffers $300 tickets to Mexican singer Ana Gabriel’s Sacramento concert on the day the bill died in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The five, all Democrats, were Sen. Susan Rubio of West Covina and Assemblymembers Mark Gonzalez, of Los Angeles; José Solache, of Lakewood; Juan Carrillo, of Palmdale; and Blanca Rubio, of West Covina. All voted for AB 470 this year, with Assemblymember Rubio voting for early iterations of the bill but not casting a floor vote.

Spokespeople for all five lawmakers told CalMatters that AT&T’s gifts did not sway their decision and that they supported the bill on merit.

The company spent another $4 million lobbying state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration about the bill this year, including $2 million spent between April and June, making it the company’s most expensive lobbying quarter in California in 20 years. It spent an additional $354,000 lobbying the utilities commission to influence the state’s carrier of last resort rules and policies around telephone companies’ service quality standards.

AT&T is so powerful in Sacramento, Grosse said, that some legislative aides told him in the past he would not win in a fight against the company.

“The (party’s) rural caucus can go ahead and they can talk to legislators, but AT&T is spending so much money on elections you are not going to prevail,” he recalled being told.

On its face, AB 470 had widespread support this year from Californians for a Connected Future, a recently formed coalition of more than 150 disability advocates, chambers of commerce, tribes, community service organizations, local officials and small businesses, including a construction company and a tennis shop. For months, dozens of those groups testified in public hearings and signed identical letters urging lawmakers to pass the bill, arguing it would incentivize modern technologies and ensure more reliable coverage.

The coalition, which describes itself as “grassroots,” also states it is a “project of USTelecom.” Rhonda Johnson, AT&T’s executive vice president of federal regulatory relations, sits on the trade group’s board. USTelecom received $250,000 from AT&T to lobby on its behalf this year, and also spent between $85,200 and $106,000 running ads on Facebook supporting the bill in the coalition’s name, according to a CalMatters tally.

It’s a prevalent practice commonly known as “astroturfing,” when corporations or trade groups enlist seemingly unaffiliated organizations for the appearance of grassroots support, said Jack Pitney, politics professor at Claremont McKenna College.

“If you don’t read the fine print, you’ll assume that … there are a lot of organizations that sincerely support this legislation.”

Lobbyists and other visitors gather in the rotunda of the state Capitol during the end of session in Sacramento on Sept. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

While the coalition often bragged about the scale and diversity of its membership, more than 80% of member organizations have ties to AT&T, CalMatters found.

Some of those groups have AT&T’s top leaders serving on their board of directors. That includes AT&T president Susan Santana, who sits on the board of the California Chamber of Commerce. Ben Golombek, the chamber’s chief of staff for policy, most recently served as the west region vice president for public affairs for AT&T. Other AT&T executives, mostly directors of external affairs, double as board members of various local chambers, business groups, foundations and voting rights groups.

AT&T also pays to be a member of many local chambers of commerce, many of whom support the bill. Of the 28 chambers in support, AT&T is listed as a corporate member of 26 of them.

Dozens of coalition members list AT&T as a key funder. The California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce calls AT&T an “invaluable” partner. Groups such as the Concerned Black Men of Los Angeles, which provides mentorship to Black local residents, list the company as a sponsor.

Others, including tribes, youth service groups and senior advocates, have partnered with the company in its $5 billion effort to “bridge the digital divide” nationwide, distributing free laptops donated by AT&T, hosting “connected learning centers” the company set up across the state to offer free digital access or receiving grants from AT&T to address digital inequity.

The telecom giant has also sponsored events for some coalition members, from golf tournaments for the San Gabriel Valley Conservation Corps to the 70th anniversary gala of Society for the Blind.

The financial support can make it hard not to align with AT&T, Pitney said.

“If AT&T has supported you in a material way, you want to make sure that support continues,” he said. “You are likely to look favorably on requests from that organization.”

CalMatters reached out to all organizations and people named in this story for comment. Most did not respond. California Chamber of Commerce spokesperson John Myers said it supported the bill because it made “economic sense.” Lauren Oto, a spokesperson for the California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce, said the group supported the AT&T-backed bill because “it represents a key opportunity for our members to see that technology is being used to improve public safety and expand access to communication.”

Norma Quiñones, executive director of the San Gabriel Valley nonprofit, told CalMatters AT&T’s sponsorship had nothing to do with the group’s support for the legislation. But the nonprofit offers job training to youths, she said, and AT&T is a prospective employer. While acknowledging not knowing much about the bill, she said it would help close the digital divide and expand high-speed internet access to underserved communities like the ones she serves.

“I wanted to build the relationship with AT&T and support their efforts,” she said. “It ultimately ties into our workforce development and our digital equity goals for our young people.”

The sway AT&T has worries residents like Grosse.

“One of the largest corporations in the world spent (millions of) dollars lobbying on this thing,” he said. “Do you really think it’s in the public’s interest?”

Regulatory change on the horizon?

If potential legislation doesn’t beat them to it, California utility regulators are expected to decide the future of California’s carrier of last resort obligations over the coming months.

The California Public Utilities Commission is currently undertaking a rulemaking process that seeks to answer questions including who should be providing last resort service, what would count as sufficient coverage and under what circumstances companies could stop doing so.

USTelecom and AT&T have advocated for changing the requirement so AT&T can stop providing this service in all but “populated areas,” and eventually leave those as well.

“Customers will gain, not lose,” AT&T said in a September 2024 filing.