Copper landline customers will keep service for now: Will broadband expand fast enough to keep WNC connected?

As telecommunication giants accelerate the nationwide phaseout of legacy copper phone lines, several Western North Carolina residents are receiving notice that the landlines they have relied on for decades are nearing retirement. Nantahala resident Susan Carpenter got one of these letters from her phone company, Verizon, and at a September Macon County Commissioners meeting, asked, “What is the plan?” For households tucked into the region’s hollers and dead zones, many, like Carpenter, worry the transition threatens to sever their primary connection to emergency services and the outside world.