California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton on Monday urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to rescind approval of AT&T’s plan to update service for thousands of customers in the state.
In late June, the FCC advanced AT&T’s plan to end landline service via copper wiring to around 184,000 residential customers, a move that overrode opposition from state regulators and Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta. While the company has argued that the development is needed to modernize infrastructure, that no customer will lose voice or 911 service, and that residents in impacted areas will receive robust wireless coverage, Hilton warned that “millions of people, especially seniors and rural residents, are now at SERIOUS risk.”
“Bureaucrats in D.C. are forcing Californians to give up their landlines,” he wrote in a post to X, highlighting his letter to Carr. “This is a violation of the 10th Amendment and MUST be reversed.”
President Donald Trump has endorsed Hilton in his bid to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and flip the state red for the first time since 2011. This week, Hilton was careful not to directly target Carr as a member of the president’s administration but urged him to “correct” the FCC’s June 29 decision to override California’s utilities commission prohibition on AT&T’s plan.
“I understand you may not have been personally involved in this particular decision. But as Chairman of the FCC, you have the authority and responsibility to correct it,” he wrote in the letter to Carr.
“California’s own public utilities commission rejected AT&T’s request to withdraw as a Carrier of Last Resort,” Hilton continued. “The CPUC heard from Californians, reviewed the facts, and concluded that AT&T had not shown there were reliable replacement providers ready and able to serve as a safety-net provider for these 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.”
Hilton’s letter comes as AT&T has faced significant opposition from California officials in its effort to move away from landline service. In 2024, state regulators blocked the telecommunications company from taking that step, after the Utility Reform Network estimated that hundreds of thousands of households in the Bay Area and millions around California would lose landline service.
At the time, House Democrats representing the Bay Area, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), claimed the proposal threatened public safety “in an area plagued by earthquakes, severe storms, floods, and fires, and that has a geography that often disrupts cellular service for days, if not weeks, at a time.”
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AT&T believes modern alternatives to copper wire landlines hold up better during disasters.
The company told Mercury News in 2024 that fewer than 7% of households in its California service areas use traditional landlines and that “a great number of those households also have alternatives available where they live.” In its proposal to the utilities commission, AT&T claimed its landline services were “fast becoming a historical curiosity” and that they serve no “valid public purpose.”