Even in the heart of LA, they still trust the old lines and don’t want to lose them.

Living high in the Hollywood Hills, Peter and Nanci Ellis thought of their landline as something that could help them.

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

But the landline is also important in their neighborhood – which has few roads and is highly vulnerable to fires and earthquakes – because it connects to their alarm system and monitors smoke detectors.

“We need to make sure we can be reached by emergency responders, and have access” in the event of a disaster, the Ellises wrote last month. public comment to the Federal Communications Commission. The deadly tornadoes that hit Los Angeles in 2025, they noted, proved that “minutes make the difference between life and death.”

Old copper wire phones are going the way of many other outdated pieces of technology as smartphones have become the way many people surf the web, pay bills, watch movies and chat with friends and family. But some residents of LA and California — especially those living in fire-prone areas — are determined to stick with their traditional phones.

As telecommunications giant AT&T accelerates its push to withdraw landline service from nearly 184,000 homes and 15,000 businesses across the state, hundreds of Californians have voiced their concerns over public opinion. Many who rely on copper telephone lines live in remote rural areas, but others live in the hills and valleys of major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, where cell and Internet service is poor and the risk of natural disasters is high.

“It’s really sad,” said Sarah Adams, 81, a retired high school math teacher who lives alone in a Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood with only one exit. To be in a situation where there is an emergency, such as an earthquake or a fire, and my cell phone is not working, I have no way to communicate with my family.”

California law requires AT&T, the state’s largest carrier of last resort, to provide basic phone service to anyone who requests it in certain areas. But AT&T, which made $23.4 billion in revenue last year, is aiming to end its landline service on or after June 1.

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

The state has pushed back for years against AT&T’s efforts to cut copper lines. But the battle has intensified in recent months after the Federal Communications Commission issued an order in March that gave telecommunications companies a way to challenge the state law, “cutting through the red tape that requires providers to keep aging copper wires in place and effectively prevents them from investing in the modern infrastructure Americans want and deserve.”

In May, AT&T filed a federal lawsuit against the California Public Utilities Commission and the state attorney general’s office, seeking a court order that says the state cannot stop AT&T from terminating landlines. In late June, the FCC approved an appeal from AT&T to suspend its landline service, despite California’s order that it continue to provide service.

The FCC’s decision doesn’t allow AT&T to immediately give up its landlines, said Ryan Johnston, a telecommunications regulatory attorney who works for the Utility Reform Network. The company is still awaiting FCC rulings on two separate applications, he said, as well as a federal court ruling on AT&T’s request to block California from enforcing its carrier’s final decision.

AT&T maintains that switching away from landlines is a year-long process. “No customer will be left without access to a phone or 911 service,” an AT&T spokesperson said in a statement. “Nothing will change for customers in areas where there is no reliable wireless coverage to support voice calls, such as in some rural communities.”

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

Utility consumer advocates say copper telephones are more disaster-reliable than cellular networks because they carry their own low-voltage power lines and don’t rely on local power grids or cell towers that can overload and drop calls.

But AT&T figures that copper networks can be destroyed in large fire events, don’t hold water well and take a long time to repair. Today’s networks are more resilient to disasters, says an AT&T spokesman, because they can be restored quickly and are less vulnerable to damage and copper theft.

AT&T says it will only remove copper landlines in areas where there is a reliable connection available from AT&T, such as AT&T Phone – Advanced. According to an AT&T spokesperson, AP-A operates “as a traditional telephone service on our wireless network and meets FCC standards for replacing traditional telephone service.”

However, Johnston said AP-A was not an adequate landline. A traditional copper line carries power over the line, so even if the power goes out in your house and you pick up the phone, you’ll have a dial tone, he said. AP-A, however, requires power from two places – the cell site and your home.

“If the electricity is turned off in one of these two places,” he said, “you won’t be able to make calls.”

Advocates for rural Californians, such as the Rural County Representatives of California and the California State Assn. of Counties, pushed back on AT&T’s plan to phase out landline calls, saying rural residents should not be left behind as technology advances.

Even in LA, the state’s largest county with about 9.7 million residents, some residents in hard-hit areas who live where cellphone coverage is poor or power outages are frequent may find themselves relying on copper wire lines for emergency 911 access.

“We can’t just say, ‘Oh, this is only going to affect seniors, this is only going to affect rural people,'” Johnston said. “No, it’s going to affect people of all ages in all kinds of places, and we shouldn’t be willing to sacrifice those people to say we’re making progress in modernizing networks.”

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

.”If we continue to say that we will move from this legacy technology to this new wireless technology,” he said, “that technology cannot really be migrated.”

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

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Peter Ellis, 63, a retired film editor, said he was not swayed by AT&T’s argument that he should get his emergency phone service online. He says that every time he works from home, there were times when the service was slow or stopped.

“Our internet is unreliable,” he told The Times. “Our internet is not as stable as an old copper landline.”

Adams said her late husband, who was an electrical engineer, always insisted that she have a landline, so they could contact family or emergency services in the event of a disaster. Cell phones, he told her, probably don’t work in earthquakes. So as AT&T raised rates over the past year — her last monthly bill was $138 — Adams stuck with a landline, believing it kept her safe.

Still, Adams is frustrated that there aren’t reliable and affordable options. Recently, he switched his cell service from AT&T to T Mobile, he said, hoping to get better reception when he calls in his area. But even his new cell phone service is often cut off.

“We’re here in this place with expensive housing,” said Adams, “yet with the same problems that rural people face.”

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

Ultimately, Johnston said, the main issue is reliability, not AT&T’s resistance to modernizing its network. “The things that AT&T is proposing,” he said, “are not going to be very reliable, they’re not going to connect to a lot of the technology that people use.”

Before AT&T cuts off calls connecting people with emergency services and first responders, Johnston said, the company needs to figure out how to make sure everyone can transition to a reliable system.

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