TRURO — Patricia Bennett was washing the dishes in her North Truro home on July 27 when she heard screaming outside.
She rushed to her deck, where she was having some work done, and discovered that the carpenter had fallen several feet and injured his ribs, she said. She told him not to move and dialed 911 on her cell phone.
Her cell phone had no service, and the call didn’t go through, she said. Neighbors who had heard the screaming joined her outside — all of them had cell phones, but no one was able to call for help because there was no service.
“It was a nightmare,” said Bennett.
A neighbor ran about 200 feet toward a main road to call 911, Bennett and her neighbor Ben Coleman both said. The call connected, and an ambulance came. The carpenter was treated and recovered from his injuries, Bennett said.
Bennett has a landline at her home, but it was down for maintenance that day, she said. Now, residents across the Outer Cape are preparing to have their landline service discontinued for good, as Verizon pushes to modernize its system by phasing out copper-wire or “plain old telephone service” (POTS).
Residential notice letters obtained by the Independent state that on or after Nov. 30 Verizon will disconnect traditional copper-based home phone services for “certain customers in your area.”
“If your service will be discontinued, you will have the opportunity to switch to service delivered using fiber, cable, or modern wireless technology,” the letter says.
Diana Alvear, associate director of the company’s reputation and risk management team, declined to clarify the number of Outer Cape residents whose landlines will be disconnected.
“Legacy copper voice service will not be discontinued for any customer until a suitable replacement is available,” Alvear said in an email.
The company’s Sept. 9 filing with the FCC to permit the discontinuation of copper-line phone service makes it clear that because “suitable replacements” are so prevalent, nearly every Verizon landline in the state could soon be disconnected.
“Verizon plans to discontinue its residential and business legacy copper-based POTS service throughout its telephone service areas” in nine states, including Massachusetts, so long as alternative services are available, the FCC filing says.
Those alternative services include wireless, cable, or fiber optic-based phones from Verizon or 10 other companies, the filing says.
“Verizon specifically seeks discontinuance authority where the Broadband Data Collection reveals that one of the aforementioned ‘top ten’ providers makes available fiber or cable or 4G LTE or better mobile coverage,” the FCC filing says.
According to the FCC’s National Broadband Map, nearly every address on the Outer Cape has at least four such options: Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile wireless service and Comcast Xfinity cable lines, which support Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phones.
The Sept. 9 filing also references two decisions by the FCC this summer that permitted Verizon to end copper-wire phone service in 13 other states, mostly in the South and Midwest. “It is consistent with precedent to find that these services constitute adequate replacements,” the company’s filing says.
Spotty Cell Service
Despite the National Broadband Map, which says her neighborhood has 4G LTE wireless service from AT&T and Verizon and 5G service from T-Mobile, Bennett says that unreliable cell service on the Outer Cape “affects every part of your life.”
“I am sitting on my couch in my living room right now, facing west,” she told a reporter in September. “If I move from here and go into my kitchen or into my yard in the back, I have no cell service. It drops almost immediately.”
“This is a safety issue,” Bennett added, citing potential emergencies such as a heart attack or a child drowning in a pool.
Bennett is not the only one with concerns.
The Independent reported in September 2025 that seven state legislators from Cape Cod and the Islands had written to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile to complain that cell service here is subpar.
A 2023 survey by the Cape Cod Commission found that 39 percent of Outer Cape respondents said their calls drop or fail at least once per week.
Cynthia Franklin, who lives off Old Wharf Road in Wellfleet, received a notice on Sept. 8 that her landline would be discontinued.
“I was very upset,” she said. “Although we do have cell phones, we’ve kept the landline and paid for it every month because the cell phone service isn’t reliable. We like having the landline here for emergencies and also just to be able to talk to people without the call dropping halfway through.”
Batteries and 911
Although there are ground-based alternatives to Verizon’s copper-wire landlines, they all share one feature: they depend on the electric grid for power and need batteries for backup power.
Connecting home-phone handsets to Verizon’s wireless network involves a plug-in electric device that holds a charge for 24 hours and can use replaceable AA batteries during a longer blackout, according to Verizon’s Sept. 8 letter to customers.
The device that routes handset calls into Verizon fiber optic lines carries 24 hours of backup power in a blackout and can run on 12 D batteries after that, the letter says.
Phone service delivered over cable, such as by Comcast Xfinity, involves electric-powered devices with a battery backup, the letter says.
For people willing to go all-wireless, “modern cell phones can go without a charge for more than 24 hours when kept in standby mode,” and can be recharged in a car or with “a charged power bank, which is inexpensive,” the letter says.
All of these options can place a 911 call during a blackout, but only if they’ve been charged or supplied with battery power, the letter says.
Town Buildings
The county dispatchers who receive 911 calls during a storm will have service during a blackout, Wellfleet Town Administrator Tom Guerino said. “911 will continue to work. People should not be concerned about that.”
Town governments will be experiencing system changes before the discontinuation of copper-wire landlines reaches residents, Barnstable County IT Systems Administrator Ryan Johnson told the Independent this fall.
Wellfleet was already switching its phone service to a wireless Microsoft Teams product when Verizon gave notice earlier this year that the town’s landlines would be disconnected by Oct. 28.
Verizon is discontinuing 23 municipal copper-wire lines and seven more at the school. The affected lines include those at the fire dept., dept. of public works, Adult Community Center, town hall, and library, including some fax numbers and elevator lines, Johnson said.
Because the town will now be relying on VOIP, which uses electric router devices to send phone calls over the internet, the town’s principal phone system will not work during an extended blackout.
Eastham transitioned its copper phone lines to VOIP in 2024. Town Manager Rich Bienvenue said that OpenCape’s fiber optic network is the town’s primary connection to the internet, with Comcast Xfinity cable service as a backup. Eastham has to pay for its third option, the Starlink satellite network, only when the town actually uses it, Bienvenue said.
Wellfleet’s municipal internet services are provided by OpenCape, with Comcast as a backup and Verizon wireless after that, Johnson said.
Nonetheless, all three of those went offline during the Feb. 23 blizzard, which created a two-to-four-day blackout on the Outer Cape. The town tapped a fourth connection, AT&T wireless, to eventually restore its internet systems, Johnson said.
“The only thing that survived was the copper line going into the police station,” Johnson said of Wellfleet’s phone systems during the blizzard. “Everything else went down except for that copper line.”
Despite that experience, Johnson was sanguine about the loss of traditional phone lines.
“We need to harden our internet, because that’s our main lifeline now,” Johnson said. “We call it ‘chasing nines’ in the IT world: 99.99-percent reliability. We just have to try to get all of the internet that we can.”
