AT&T Cuts Toward an AI Future: Fewer Jobs, No Copper, Cloud Routers

AT&T's chief technology officer says the company will employ fewer people five years from now, as the telecom giant leans into AI automation, retires its copper landline network, and rebuilds its core infrastructure in the cloud.

"We're not going to have the same headcount in five years as we do today," Jeremy Legg told WIRED, adding that AT&T benchmarks its staffing levels against competitors. Public financial disclosures show AT&T generated less revenue per employee last year than Verizon and T-Mobile, both of which have also laid off workers in recent months.

The scale of the shrinkage is substantial. AT&T has already shed more than half of its workforce over the past decade. It cut 8,000 jobs last year and another 2,100 in the first half of 2026. If the current pace continues, its workforce could approach 85,000 employees by 2030 — a figure a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to speak publicly, described as the company's target. AT&T called that number inaccurate. The company employed nearly 131,000 people as of June.

CEO John Stankey framed the endgame at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, saying that by the end of the decade AT&T wants to be a "dramatically different" company with a "fantastic" fiber internet service and a "kickass wireless network."

Automating a 150-year-old machine

AT&T's transition offers a close-up view of how legacy companies rebuild operations as AI tools grow more capable. The company still handles about 15 percent of the world's internet traffic, according to Legg, and some of its decades-old systems still run on paper records — including manual processing when a customer wants to disconnect phone service. Some of that work is now automated.

The company deploys AI across its operations: customer service, identifying locations for new cell towers, and detecting maintenance issues on existing ones. A generative AI system AT&T calls GeoModeler adjusts network settings on the fly during rare events like extreme weather. Like many companies, AT&T also uses AI to generate software code and manage service issues.

A bigger structural shift starts next year, when AT&T will replace physical hardware at thousands of central hubs with cloud software from DriveNets, an Israeli startup AT&T has invested in. The change lets technicians make adjustments remotely — for example, when a customer requests faster internet. As more tasks automate, AT&T expects a number of middle management and junior developer roles to disappear.

Pulling the copper

In parallel, AT&T is decommissioning the energy-intensive copper wire network that long powered its landline telephone and DSL internet services. Dropping these services generally requires approval from state and federal regulators, since rural areas may lack alternatives, and the plans have drawn local protests in some communities. By the end of this year, AT&T expects it will no longer have to offer copper in more than 85 percent of its existing footprint.

"What it allows us to do is to retire underutilized infrastructure, and infrastructure that is absorbing a lot of power and personnel attention," CFO Pascal Desroches said at a different conference earlier this month.

The savings are concrete. AT&T declined to share exact electricity figures, but said in July that its total energy consumption fell 13.1 percent from 2020 through the end of 2025. Since 2024, shifting away from copper has saved 660,000 megawatt-hours — enough to power about 65,000 homes. "There's a bunch of copper out there that probably makes AT&T the fifth-largest copper mine in the United States right now, seriously," Stankey said at the Goldman Sachs conference.

Fiber versus Starlink

AT&T is now concentrating on high-speed fiber and wireless — assets Stankey has called "exactly the asset base we want as AI begins to shape the next era of connectivity." But Wall Street keeps pressing the company and its peers about looming competition from Elon Musk's SpaceX and its fast-growing satellite internet service Starlink.

Legg says Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T are cooperating on satellite service and are open to working with a variety of tech providers, potentially including Starlink. He argues fiber will remain cheaper than satellite, which also won't work everywhere, leaving AT&T well positioned to offer customers the best option for their situation.

Culture and the jobs that remain

Inside the company, the AI transition meets some hesitancy. AT&T has required five days in the office for most workers since pandemic restrictions wound down, producing natural attrition. Legg defends the mandate: he says AT&T's culture was deteriorating, and companies focused on improving culture have returned to offices.

The company has "put gobs of money" into the office experience in Dallas, Atlanta, and Seattle, Legg says, including a summer childcare program, on-site mental health therapists, and — outside his own office — an "amazing" coffee machine.

The investment reflects AT&T's expectation that it will keep hiring even as the total workforce shrinks, just for a different mix of roles. People will be needed to develop and govern AI agents and oversee otherwise fully automated processes, according to Legg. And even with copper behind it, AT&T will still need technicians to maintain fiber lines. US telecom jobs have been declining for 25 years, per government data; the open question for the industry's workforce is whether AI accelerates that curve as investors hope — and AT&T is now the clearest test case.