September 23, 2026
Automation Reshapes Telecom Workforce: AT&T Cuts 10,100 Employees
By June 2026, AT&T had cut 10,100 employees, to 130,900. AI is already serving customers, writing code, and finding faults.
In 2023, AT&T launched Ask AT&T, powered by ChatGPT, for code, document translation, and meeting summaries. By September, 30,000 employees were using it, and by April 2026, 100,000 were: the service processed 10 million API calls a day, and employees generated 2–3% of token demand.
Previously, the internal assistant primarily helped developers. Now AT&T assigns AI to customer support, cell-site selection, fault detection, code generation, and service incidents. When a cell site goes down, Geo Modeler reconfigures neighboring sites in seconds to cover the area without service.
Copper is being shut down. AT&T stopped selling legacy services in 85% of central offices, and the FCC authorized their shutdown at more than 30% of offices by the end of 2026. As of April 28, 2026, fewer than 2% of eligible customers used copper phone service. The company expects Legacy revenue to fall by more than 20% in 2026 and become immaterial by the end of 2029.
Starting in 2027, AT&T will begin replacing equipment in thousands of central offices with DriveNets software to remotely change customers' connection settings.
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