Will Copper Switch-off Come Soon?

As deployments of ultra-high speed networks continue their progress, operators have to decide on the fate of their legacy copper networks. Literally, they must deal with their exit from the era of copper.

Aging copper-based infrastructure is increasingly costly to maintain, especially when the operator is confronted with customers’ growing expectations for network performance and quality of service impacted by FTTP standards.

Over the past couple of years, incumbents have started to announce their copper switch-off dates and implement the dismantling of their legacy networks.

However, NGA deployment plans are not going universally at the same pace, and although the migration to fibre is ongoing steadily, a significant proportion of broadband accesses still relies on ADSL.

Based on operators’ first-hand experiences with copper switchoff initiatives in Europe, Asia, and North America, this report aims at providing an in-depth view of how copper decommissioning initiatives take place, of what is at stake for the various parties and of how players are balancing the many diverse and sometimes countervailing interests at work behind the switch-off of legacy networks.