Leftover Copper Customers

The concept of buying only fiber customers from an internet service provider seems to be a new industry theme. Lumen sold its fiber customers to AT&T but retained the copper customers. We know Lumen’s stated plans when it sold fiber customers to AT&T. The company publicly said it would retain and care for its copper-based consumer services since they continue to provide a strong ongoing financial contribution to the company. But will they really? I have to think that a lot of Lumen markets were a mixture of copper and fiber, and that a lot of the technicians and much of the support apparatus for caring for these customers will leave with the fiber customers. I find it hard to imagine that Lumen will provide a robust maintenance crew to take care of the copper customers. This seems even less likely for a smaller company. Will the remaining company really want to keep the entire company structure needed to take care of copper customers? That’s not only technicians in trucks, but it means somebody to man the central offices, somebody to field customer service calls, somebody to take technical service calls and dispatch repairmen.