Opinion piece by Tina Metzer, RuralRISE
A few months ago, my high school best friend had to move home to care for his ailing parents. I had to start calling him on their landline, and the funny thing is, I remembered the number after all these years. It was just there, taking up space in my memory. I can still recite a handful of those old numbers without trying, including my grandmother’s long-gone phone number.
It’s a story playing out in small towns everywhere. Copper landlines are still in daily use by mothers and grandmothers who have had the same number, with the same provider, for decades, some of them well enough acquainted with the lineman who services their line to know him or her by name.
The copper lines that carried those calls are being retired. Fiber and wireless are taking their place. Many rural community members will celebrate the change and be very excited for the possibility; I know I was when it came to my community. However, not everyone feels this way, and for the people who are confused and uncertain, I think addressing that uncertainty is essential. I have spent enough time in rural communities to know that for some this may not feel like an upgrade but rather something essential being taken away.
Copper telephone networks are expensive to maintain, increasingly vulnerable to theft that leaves whole stretches of line down for days at a time, and harder every year to repair as replacement parts grow scarce. Providers recognize this too. Rather than continue pouring investments into outdated, costly networks, they want to focus dollars on modern networks that can give customers what they need today and in the long term. As so many rural business owners know, when something gets more expensive or hard to maintain, you have to find alternatives, or it has a negative impact on your bottom line. The shift away from copper is no different. Copper is generally more expensive to maintain, which may continue to drive up the cost of landlines year over year. This isn’t a single company’s decision or a single funder’s agenda. It’s where the entire industry is headed, the same way cable slowly replaced the party line a generation ago.
Copper had a lot of benefits for many years, one of them being that when the power was out, often the phone would still work. This is important for rural communities, but as the copper parts become less available, when something does happen to the line, it sometimes takes longer to repair.
Are fiber or wireless the same as copper? No. It is a different technology entirely. Fiber is faster, more reliable in most conditions, easier and faster to fix, and better equipped to carry the things rural households increasingly depend on, such as telehealth visits, farm equipment data, schoolwork, or benefits applications. Done right, it is upgrading one lifeline for a sturdier one.
But “done right” is the question that rural communities have earned the right to ask before they trust it.
I don’t feel rural distrust of this shift is stubbornness. Many times, it is born from the pattern of what rural communities have had to face in the past.
Some rural communities have been promised connectivity before and watched the promise stall at the county line. They have seen infrastructure investment show up without anyone explaining (in plain language) how it is going to benefit them and why it should matter. And they have been targeted, disproportionately, by scammers who impersonate the very providers making these changes, because scammers know that unfamiliarity is an opening.
None of that skepticism is irrational. Treating that skepticism as an obstacle to be managed, rather than a signal to listen to, is how you lose the trust of the people you’re trying to serve.
I’m not going to tell rural families that change is automatically good, or that every part of this transition will go smoothly, because it won’t. Some households may temporarily lose service during the changeover. Some will get a letter in the mail they don’t fully understand. Some will, understandably, be angry about it. Pretending otherwise isn’t advocacy. It’s marketing, and rural communities can tell the difference.
However, holding on to a shrinking, aging copper network because the transition is uncomfortable may negatively impact community members in the long run. The conversation rural communities actually need isn’t about whether this transition happens, but how it happens and who’s accountable for getting it right.
I’ve come to believe the useful question isn’t whether this change should happen. It’s happening, county by county, because copper is no longer a reliable solution and rural consumers will ultimately foot the bill. So rather than question whether it will happen, the community has an opportunity to be a voice asking about how it happens, and who’s responsible for making sure it doesn’t leave people behind.
That means providers doing the actual changeover work should provide rural customers more than a technical notice. Many rural areas, want to be heard and have their questions answered. That means local leaders need clear language and answers to the questions their neighbors are going to ask, not a press release. And it means someone has to be tracking, honestly and publicly, whether this transition is actually working for the people living through it, not just whether the copper got decommissioned on schedule. These needs are why it was so important that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year ordered the creation of a master docket where Americans can submit comments on the transition. Once fully established, there will be a single consolidated place where all Americans can make their voices heard.
At RuralRISE, our role isn’t to referee the industry, legislators, or latest technology, but to make sure the community has a voice where it matters most. That industry leaders hear the voice and understand how a community is feeling. Our job is to make sure local leaders have a trusted partner as they are trying to make the best decision for their neighbors. Everyone building this transition benefits from knowing what is actually working on the ground.
I don’t think feeling uncertainty about new technology and believing in better infrastructure are in conflict. Rural communities have always known how to hold both: the loss of something familiar and the pursuit of something better, at the same time, without pretending either one cancels the other out.
No one should ask rural communities to be grateful for a change they rarely get to shape. Ask them what it would take to earn their trust and listen. More often than not, the resistance has little to do with the underlying technology and everything to do with whether someone took the time to explain it and to stay accountable once it’s explained.
In my friend’s transition back to our rural area, I witnessed this firsthand. I helped my friend get his parents connected. Not because they were excited about it, but because he needed it to support his parents: to ask important health questions, to book their appointments, to continue working remotely, and to hold onto a little of his own sanity during a hard time.
That’s the real case for change: not always excitement, but necessity, met with enough care that the people living through it don’t have to face it alone.