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Switching & Setup

POTS Line Replacement: What Your Phone Provider Replaces, and What It Shouldn't Touch

Carriers are shutting off copper lines. Which ones your phone provider replaces, which ones your alarm company does, and how to find them all.

WB

Wes Boggs

VP of Operations

7 min read
A gray plywood telephone backboard in a cluttered office storage closet. An old punch-down block and a beige carrier box are tangled in gray copper phone cable, and a manila tag tied to one cable is handwritten in pen: Alarm, do not disconnect. Boxes of copy paper, a ladder, a network switch, and a torn office chair fill the room behind it.
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When a client sends us their phone bill, we go through every line on it and figure out what each one is doing. The copper line that’s still plugged into the fire panel usually isn’t on that bill. Most of the time it’s on a different bill that never gets sent to us.

If you got a letter from AT&T, Verizon, or CenturyLink about changes to your service, it’s almost certainly about POTS lines, short for plain old telephone service: the copper landlines carriers are retiring. As of early October, AT&T has FCC approval to stop providing copper phone service to about 90,000 customers in 18 states, starting as early as November 15, 2026.1 Verizon has filed to do the same at about 750,000 locations in nine states and DC starting November 30, though that one is still waiting on approval. Its filing says that’s 2.7% of the homes and businesses it could serve there.2 CenturyLink filed on September 30 to end copper voice in parts of 24 Florida cities, also starting November 30.3

Why Your Phones Are Probably Not the Problem

We can’t remember the last time we found a copper line still carrying phone calls for a business. If a phone system isn’t VoIP already, it’s almost always running on a PRI, a digital circuit built for a phone system rather than a bundle of individual copper lines. If you have one, your bill lists it as a PRI.

The copper that’s left tends to be plugged into something other than a phone: an alarm panel, a fire panel, an elevator.

How to Find Every Copper Line You Pay For

  1. Pull every phone bill your business pays, including bills from a different phone company than the one your business lines are on. Alarm and elevator lines often sit on their own account.
  2. List every phone number on every bill, including the ones nobody recognizes.
  3. Match each number to what it’s plugged into. For any line that might run the alarm, the fire panel, or the elevator, ask the company that services that equipment.
  4. Decide who replaces each one.
LineWho replaces itWhat it usually moves toWhat to do
Phone lines and PRIsYour phone providerHosted VoIP, with your numbers portedSend us the bill
FaxYour phone providerCloud fax, or an adapter for a physical machineSend us the bill
Fire alarm panelYour alarm company, with the fire marshal’s approvalA cellular or radio communicator, which current fire codes allow4Ask what they’ll replace the line with and whether the fire marshal has signed off
Security alarmYour alarm companyA cellular or IP communicatorAsk whether your panel still runs on a phone line
Elevator emergency phoneYour elevator companyWhatever your local code allows for that elevatorAsk what your elevator needs under your local code
Card terminals, postage meters, door phonesUsually nobodyMost already run over the internetCheck each one anyway

Send us the bills and we’ll sort out the phone and fax lines. It’s not unusual to find a copper line still wired into an alarm or fire panel. When we do, we tell you it’s there and that you need to keep it until that vendor replaces it.

Phone Lines and PRIs

This is the part we replace. Your numbers port to the new system, your old phones keep working until the new ones are set up and tested, and you switch over on a date we coordinate with you. A typical rollout takes about three weeks.

If you’re on a PRI, the November deadlines don’t apply to you, because none of those filings covers PRIs. They’re aging too, though. Verizon filed in June 2026 to discontinue some of its PRI and T1 service nationwide,5 and AT&T has stopped taking new PRI orders in some areas.6 Replacing a PRI is the same project as replacing copper phone lines, and the switching guide walks through it.

Fax Lines

We prefer cloud fax: faxes arrive in email, and you send them from your computer.

If you have a reason to keep a physical fax machine, we connect it with an analog telephone adapter (ATA). Fax machines were designed for copper lines and don’t handle the delays and lost packets of an internet connection well, which is why we set up the ATA specifically for fax.

Fax isn’t included in the $24.95 per user.7 We bill fax lines separately. Cloud fax starts at $10.50 a month, including the fax number, and the price depends on your setup, and sometimes on how much you fax.

Fire Alarm, Security, and Elevator Lines

We don’t replace these. It’s a safety issue, and it needs to be handled by the people who install and support the safety equipment.

Don’t expect the carrier to sort this out for you. When the FCC rewrote its rules for these shutoffs in March 2026, the alarm industry asked it to require carriers to offer replacements that work with alarm equipment. The FCC declined and only encouraged carriers to avoid breaking alarm signaling.8

Some carriers and equipment vendors sell boxes that keep an analog line working over cellular. We don’t sell them. If your alarm or elevator vendor wants one, they’ll supply it or tell you which one to buy.

Cancelling the Old Lines

We don’t cancel your copper lines. We tell you which lines you have and what each one was doing, and you cancel them with the carrier. That’s on purpose: if a line turns out to run your fire panel, you want to decide when it goes, after your alarm company has moved it.

Once your numbers have ported and the alarm and elevator lines are handled, cancel the rest.

Questions We Get About Copper Lines

Will you replace the phone line for our fire alarm or elevator?
No. Your alarm company and your elevator company install and support that equipment, so they handle the replacement, and your local fire marshal decides what the fire panel is allowed to use. When we find one of those lines during an audit, we tell you it's there and that you need to keep it until they've moved it.
Is fax included in the $24.95 per user?
No. The $24.95 is per user per month, plus taxes and regulatory fees, and fax lines are billed separately. Cloud fax starts at $10.50 a month, including the fax number, and the price depends on your setup, and sometimes on how much you fax. We prefer a cloud fax service that sends and receives through email. If you have a reason to keep a physical fax machine, we connect it with an analog telephone adapter instead.
How much warning will our carrier give us before it shuts off copper?
Probably some, but don't count on a lot. AT&T mailed its customers about a year ahead of its November 2026 date. Federal rules don't require anything close to that, and a carrier's request is usually approved automatically about a month after the FCC announces it, unless the FCC pulls it for review. Find your lines before the letter shows up.
Do you cancel our old copper lines after we switch?
No. We tell you which lines you have and what each one was doing. You cancel them with your carrier, so a line that turns out to run your alarm panel doesn't go until you decide it should.
We already have VoIP. Does any of this apply to us?
It might. Your phones are fine, but alarm panels, fire panels, and elevator phones often still sit on copper lines billed separately from your phone service. Pull every phone bill you pay, including bills from a different phone company than the one your business lines are on, and check.

Got a carrier letter, or a pile of bills you can’t make sense of?

Send us every phone bill you pay. That’s how we build an accurate quote, and we’ll tell you which lines we’d replace and which ones another vendor has to replace.

Get Your Quote →   or call 844-767-1924

Footnotes

  1. AT&T, Section 63.71 application, WC Docket No. 25-335, filed December 1, 2025, covering Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin; FCC Public Notice DA 25-1043, December 12, 2025. Application · FCC notice ↩

  2. Verizon, Section 63.71 application, WC Docket No. 26-252, filed September 9, 2026. A separate Verizon request covering nine other states (WC Docket No. 26-227) was removed from automatic grant by the FCC on September 25, 2026. Application · FCC DA 26-1038 ↩

  3. CenturyLink of Florida and CenturyLink of Nevada, discontinuance application, WC Docket No. 26-285, filed September 30, 2026. Application ↩

  4. NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code, 2010 edition and later; summarized by the Town of Brighton, NY Fire Marshal. Brighton Fire Marshal ↩

  5. Verizon (MCI and MCImetro entities), Section 63.71 application to discontinue ISDN PRI, Full T1 Service, Digital PBX Trunks, and Virtual Foreign Exchange, notice dated June 2026; Florida PSC courtesy copy filed June 23, 2026. Filing ↩

  6. AT&T, Discontinued Legacy Service Log, September 4, 2026. Log ↩

  7. $24.95 per user per month. Applicable taxes and FCC regulatory fees are additional. ↩

  8. FCC, Network and Services Modernization Report and Order, FCC 26-19, adopted March 26, 2026. Order ↩

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