AT&T TO ELIMINATE COPPER PHONE LINES NEXT WEEK

After several years of false starts and discussions, on Nov. 5 AT&T will be officially abandoning copper phone line telephone services. All land line phones will either use fiber optic cables or coaxial cables to communicate. The downside is that those systems require dedicated power at the phone point, whereas the old copper lines worked even when the power was out. The City has a number of copper service lines we use for redundant backups and emergency situations, including some lines going into our Emergency Operations Center and 9-1-1 systems. We are in the process of transitioning those lines to alternative options, such as cell phones, satellite phones, or cloud-based phone systems so we will continue to have options even in emergency situations.