The copper is retiring. Your lines don't have to.
POTS line replacement from an FCC-licensed carrier: every analog line in the building — phones, fax, elevator, alarms, gate boxes — moved to SIP at carrier rates, numbers ported, and the code-bound lines handled with the care they legally require.
No shutoff date. A very real sunset.
There is no law turning POTS off on a date — what exists is deregulation compounding into retirement. The FCC's 2019 forbearance order ended wholesale copper obligations; its March 2026 modernization order removed most of the remaining procedural steps between a carrier deciding to retire copper and doing it, leaving direct customer notice as the main safeguard. AT&T has publicly targeted exiting copper across the vast majority of its footprint by the end of 2029, and legacy line prices have been climbing steeply by design. The full timeline — orders, dates, and what notice you'll get — is worth ten minutes.
The practical translation: every POTS line in your building is now on borrowed, increasingly expensive time — and the right moment to migrate is before the retirement notice, not after it.
Every line has a right answer.
The mistake in most POTS migrations is treating all lines alike. Phones and fax are straightforward SIP conversions; the life-safety lines carry code requirements; the modem-based stragglers need honest triage. Line by line:
| LINE TYPE | REPLACEMENT PATH | WHAT MATTERS |
|---|---|---|
| Office phones & main numbers | SIP lines / cloud PBX | Port the numbers; retire the copper entirely |
| Fax machines | SIP with T.38 / G.711 via ATA | Avoid compressed cellular voice paths |
| Elevator phones | Code-compliant path (SIP or listed cellular) | ASME A17.1: monitoring, verification, standby power |
| Fire alarm panels | Listed communicator per NFPA 72 | Supervised path + ~24h secondary power; AHJ approval |
| Burglar alarms | Listed IP/cellular communicator | Central station and insurer dictate accepted paths |
| POS / modems / postage meters | IP migration, or G.711 ATA at low baud | The most fragile devices on any voice path |
| Gate & door boxes | SIP via ATA, or cellular callbox | Weatherized power and survivability planning |
Two deep-dives for the lines people worry about most: elevator phone line requirements and the cellular "POTS in a box" category — what those appliances genuinely solve and where their limits are.
Replace copper with a carrier, not a coupon.
The POTS-replacement market is crowded with resellers wrapping hardware around someone else's network. SIPNEX is the network: an FCC-licensed carrier providing SIP lines at carrier rates, number porting from our side of the table, A-level STIR/SHAKEN attestation on outbound calls, and engineers who treat a dead line as a trace to read rather than a ticket to route. Whether the endpoint is an ATA on a fax machine, a cloud PBX replacing the phone closet, or trunks into a PBX you keep — the lines land on the carrier itself.
About POTS replacement with SIPNEX.
Is there a deadline when POTS lines shut off?
What replaces a POTS line?
How much do POTS lines cost now?
Can elevator phones and fire alarms move off POTS?
Do fax machines work over VoIP?
What happens to my phone numbers when POTS lines retire?
Why replace POTS lines with a carrier instead of a reseller box?
Audit the building before the notice arrives.
Send us your line inventory — or just the phone bill — and you get back a line-by-line replacement plan: what moves to SIP, what needs listed equipment, what the numbers port like, and what it costs at carrier rates.