Even in the heart of L.A., they still rely on old-fashioned landlines and don’t want to lose them

Living high up in the Hollywood Hills, Peter and Nanci Ellis think of their landline as a lifeline.

Most days, cellphone service in their Los Feliz Oaks home near Griffith Park is so spotty that they rely on their traditional phone for medical consultations, job interviews or any call with long wait times.

But the landline is also essential in their neighborhood — which has few roads in and out and is at high risk of fires and earthquake landslides — because it connects to their alarm system and monitors their smoke detectors.

“We need to be sure we can be reached by emergency services, and to be able to reach out” in the event of a disaster, the Ellises wrote last month in a public comment to the Federal Communications Commission. The deadly firestorms that erupted in Los Angeles in 2025, they noted, proved “minutes made the difference between life and death.”

Old copper landlines are going the way of so many other aging pieces of technology as smartphones have become the way many people surf the web, pay bills, watch movies and keep up with friends and family. But some residents of L.A. and California — particularly those who live in fire-prone areas — are determined to hold on to their traditional phones.

As telecommunications giant AT&T accelerates its push to retire landline service to about 184,000 households and 15,000 businesses across the state, hundreds of Californians have voiced alarm in public comments. Many who rely on copper-wire landlines live in remote rural areas, but some also live in the hills and canyons of major metro areas like Los Angeles, where cell and internet service is patchy and the risk of natural disasters is high.

“It’s unnerving, for sure,” said Sarah Adams, 81, a retired high school math teacher who lives alone in a Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood with only one road in and out. “To be in a situation where if there’s an emergency, like an earthquake or a fire, and my mobile phone doesn’t work, I have no means to communicate with my family.”

California law requires AT&T, the largest carrier of last resort in the state, to offer basic telephone service to anyone who asks for it in certain areas. But AT&T, which made $23.4 billion in profit last year, is pushing to discontinue its traditional landline service on or after June 1 next year.

For AT&T, copper landlines have become obsolete technology, much like Kodak film or Blockbuster VHS tapes. The company says only 3% of households it serves in California use its copper system, which costs $1 billion a year to maintain. Discontinuing landlines, AT&T argues, would allow it to provide more households with advanced fiber and wireless technology.

The state has pushed back for years against AT&T’s attempts to cut copper landlines. But the battle has intensified in recent months after the Federal Communications Commission issued a March order that offered telecommunications companies a path to appeal state law, “cutting through the red tape that has both required providers to keep aging copper lines in place and effectively prevented them from investing in the modern infrastructure that Americans want and deserve.”

In May, AT&T filed a federal lawsuit against California’s Public Utilities Commission and the state attorney general’s office, requesting a court order declaring the state cannot stop AT&T from cutting landlines. In late June, the FCC approved a petition from AT&T to end its landline service, despite a California order that it must continue offering the service.

The FCC decision does not allow AT&T to immediately discontinue its landlines, said Ryan Johnston, a telecommunications regulatory attorney who works for the Utility Reform Network. The company is still waiting for FCC decisions on two separate applications, he said, plus a federal court ruling on AT&T’s request to bar California from enforcing its carrier of last resort rule.

AT&T maintains the transition away from landlines is a year-long process. “No customer will be left without access to phone or 911 service,” an AT&T spokesman said in a statement. “Nothing will change for customers in areas where there isn’t reliable wireless coverage to support voice calling, like in some rural communities.”

But California regulators and consumer watchdogs disagree with AT&T on what constitutes a reliable replacement.

Advocates for utility consumers say that copper landlines are more reliable in disasters than cellular networks because they carry their own low-voltage electricity through the wires and do not rely on local power grids or cell towers that can get overloaded and drop calls.

But AT&T counters that copper networks can be destroyed in major fire events, do not hold up well to water and take longer to repair. Modern networks are more resilient in disasters, an AT&T spokesman said, because they can be restored faster and are less vulnerable to damage and copper theft.

AT&T states it will retire copper landlines only in areas where there is reliable connectivity available from AT&T, like AT&T Phone – Advanced. According to an AT&T spokesman, AP-A works “just like traditional phone service over our wireless network and meets the FCC’s standards for replacing traditional phone service.”

However, Johnston said AP-A was not an adequate landline replacement. A traditional copper line carries power over the line, so even if the power is out at your house and you pick up the phone, you’ll have a dial tone, he said. AP-A, however, requires power at two locations — at the cell site and at your house.

“If the power is out at either of those two places,” he said, “then you can’t make phone calls.”

Advocates for Californians in rural areas, such as Rural County Representatives of California and the California State Assn. of Counties, have pushed back on AT&T’s plan to phase out landlines, arguing that rural residents should not be left behind as technology evolves.

Even in L.A., the nation’s largest county with about 9.7 million residents, some residents in fire-prone areas who live with poor cellular coverage or recurring power outages can find themselves relying on copper landlines for emergency 911 access.

“We can’t just say, ‘Oh, this will only impact the elderly, this will only impact the rural folks,’ ” Johnston said. “No, it’s going to impact folks of every age in all sorts of places, and we shouldn’t be willing to sacrifice those folks just to say that we are making progress for modernizing networks.”

Some people, Johnston added, have medical alert devices, smoke alarms and home alarm systems that rely on the copper networks to work.

.”If we go ahead and say we’re going to transition from this legacy technology to these new wireless ones,” he said, “those technologies can’t really be migrated as well.”

Peter and Nanci Ellis at their Hollywood Hills home. Peter, 63, a retired film editor, said he was not persuaded by AT&T’s argument that he should get his emergency phone service through the internet.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Peter Ellis, 63, a retired film editor, said he was not persuaded by AT&T’s argument that he should get his emergency phone service through the internet. Whenever he worked at home, he said, there were times when the service was drastically slow or dropped out.

“Our internet is unreliable,” he told The Times. “Our internet is not stable the way the old copper landline telephone is.”

Adams said her late husband, an electrical engineer, always insisted on having a landline, so they could communicate with family or emergency officials in a disaster. Mobile phones, he told her, probably don’t work in an earthquake. So even as AT&T raised prices over the last year — her last monthly bill was $138 — Adams stuck with the landline, believing it keeps her safer.

Still, Adams is frustrated there are not more reliable and affordable options. Recently, she switched her cellphone service from AT&T to T Mobile, she said, hoping to get a better reception when she drives around her neighborhood. But even her new cell service frequently cuts out.

“Here we are in this expensive housing area,” Adams said, “yet with the same problems rural people are experiencing.”

This week, Steve Hilton, the GOP candidate for California governor, wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, urging him to rescind the agency’s recent action allowing AT&T to end its copper landline service. After hearing from Californians, Hilton noted, CPUC had concluded that AT&T had not shown there were reliable replacements that could serve as a safety net for some communities. “Now Washington is stepping in to override that decision and effectively force Californians to depend on cellphones, even in places where cell service is unreliable. That is wrong.”

Ultimately, Johnston said, the central issue is reliability, not resistance to AT&T modernizing its network. “The things that AT&T are suggesting,” he said, “are not going to be as reliable, they’re not going to be as interconnectable with a lot of the current technologies folks are using.”

Before AT&T cuts landlines that connect people with emergency services and first responders, Johnston said, the company needs to figure out how to make sure that everyone is able to transition to a dependable system.

“People should not have to accept a less reliable service in order to help AT&T meet its quarterly revenue goals,” Johnston said. “We should not be willing to sacrifice people for what providers consider progress.”