Originally published at ictfax.com
On 15 October 2026 the FCC's revised copper retirement and discontinuance rules take effect. Carriers can now retire copper with less public notice and faster approvals, and none of the five replacement services they can point to has to carry a fax. If your fax line still runs on copper, fax server software is how you keep it working.
That date isn't a guess. The rules were adopted in April as FCC 26-19, but seven sections were held back until the Office of Management and Budget finished its paperwork review. On 1 October the Wireline Competition Bureau published the notice that sets them live on 15 October (91 FR 62334). Those seven sections happen to be the ones that matter most for anyone still faxing over a phone company line.
What changes on 15 October
The held-back sections are the network change disclosure rules in part 51 and the discontinuance rules in part 63. Here's what each one does once it's live.
Four changes, all taking effect the same day. Sources: 91 FR 20913 and 91 FR 62334.
Copper retirement notices stop going through the FCC. The order eliminates "all filing requirements" in the network change disclosure rules. Incumbent carriers still have to post notice, but they can do it on their own publicly accessible website or in industry publications. They must still notify directly interconnected carriers and 911 providers.
Every discontinuance gets a 31-day automatic grant. The FCC applied the 31-day auto-grant period "to all discontinuance applications regardless of the applicant's status as dominant or non-dominant." Big incumbents used to wait longer.
One test replaces two. The Adequate Replacement Test and the Alternative Options Test are folded into a single technology transitions rule. More on that below, because it's where fax falls out.
Conflicting state rules are preempted. If a state's requirements clash with the federal discontinuance framework, the order says they're subject to preemption.
Put plainly: there's less public warning, a faster clock, and less room for a state regulator to slow things down. That's the stated goal. The order calls these reforms a way to speed "the transition from outdated legacy networks and services to next-generation, Internet Protocol (IP)-based infrastructure."
Five replacement services, and none has to carry a fax
To get fast approval for retiring a voice service, a carrier now certifies that at least one of five replacement services is available everywhere in the affected area. Here's the list, straight from the order.
Any one of these qualifies. Not one of them is required to pass fax or modem tones.
Notice what's missing. The 2016 rules kept a list of "key applications", alarms and medical monitors among them, that a replacement had to work with. The FCC says that compatibility requirement was always temporary, and it sunset in 2025. The new test doesn't bring it back.
The alarm industry asked for something narrower. It wanted the FCC to require that replacement services support "G.711 codec handshake with RFC 2833 disabled" on calls to alarm monitoring receivers, end to end through every carrier handoff. The FCC said no, in paragraph 21, partly because a discontinuing carrier "has no control over the configuration of the network" when the replacement comes from a third party. It encouraged carriers to configure their IP networks well, and left it there.
That matters to you because a fax machine and an alarm panel have the same problem. Both are modems. Both send audio tones that have to survive the trip intact. Squeeze those tones through a compressed codec, add jitter, or let a carrier handoff renegotiate the call, and pages fail halfway through. And if the replacement your carrier picks is option two, mobile wireless, there's no realistic way to plug a fax machine into it at all.
My honest read: the FCC didn't target fax here. It simply stopped asking. Fax was never named in the order, and that silence is the point.
How to tell whether your fax line is still on copper
Plenty of offices don't know, because nobody has looked at the line in years. A few quick checks will tell you.
Look at the bill. Copper lines usually show up as a basic business line, POTS or a measured line. If it says VoIP, digital voice or something similar, you're already on IP and the copper rules matter less than your provider's T.38 support.
Look at the wall. A fax cable that runs straight into a phone jack is likely copper. One that runs into a small box, an adapter or the back of a router is already being converted to IP somewhere.
Pull the power. Unplug the router or the adapter for a minute and try to get a dial tone on the fax line. Copper lines generally keep working without local power. IP lines generally don't.
Ask the carrier directly. Ask whether the line is copper and whether its wire center is on a retirement or discontinuance list. Write down the answer and the date.
If it turns out you're already on IP and faxes have been failing on and off, that's the same problem described above. It just arrived early.
What fax server software changes about this
The fix is to stop depending on a copper line behaving like a copper line. There are two parts to it.
First, get fax off the audio path. T.38 is the protocol built for sending fax over IP. Instead of pushing modem tones through a voice codec and hoping, it relays the fax as data, with redundancy for lost packets. A FreeSWITCH based fax server can terminate T.38 from a SIP trunk, so the copper line, and whatever replaces it, drops out of the picture.
Second, get the people off the machine. Once faxes land on a server, staff can send and receive through email-to-fax and web-to-fax, and every page lands in a log you control. That second part is what most offices actually feel. The machine in the corner stops being a single point of failure.
If you've been following the copper story, this is the next chapter of the one we covered in August, when AT&T's analog fax lines were on a 180-day clock. That piece was about one carrier's timetable. This one is about the federal rules every carrier now works under.
A fax server software checklist before your line moves
Find every fax number you have. Not just the main fax. Check the copier with a fax card, the line in the pharmacy, the old number printed on referral forms. You can't protect a number you've forgotten.
Watch the carrier's website, not the FCC. From 15 October, copper retirement notices don't have to go through the FCC's system. Bookmark your carrier's network change page, and read every letter your carrier sends about a discontinuance.
Test a real fax over the replacement before you agree to it. Send a ten-page document, both ways, at a busy time of day. One cover page proves nothing.
Ask your SIP provider one question: do you support T.38 end to end? If the answer is vague, plan around G.711 passthrough failing under load.
Port fax numbers to a SIP trunk that feeds your own fax server. Keep the numbers your partners already use, and move the line underneath them.
Keep a transmission log. If you handle patient data, a dated record of what was sent, to whom and whether it confirmed is what you'll want when someone asks.
If you'd rather run this yourself than rent it, the ICTFax fax server software page covers what a self-hosted setup includes, and the packages page has the editions.
What we don't know yet
Plenty. The rules set the process, not anyone's schedule. Each carrier decides which wire centers go next and when, so there's no national date to plan against. The preemption language will probably be tested by states that disagree with it. And because notices no longer pass through the FCC, it'll be harder for anyone, us included, to track where copper is going away. Assume your line is on the list until your carrier tells you otherwise.
Frequently asked questions
When do the new FCC copper rules take effect?
15 October 2026. The Report and Order (FCC 26-19) was published on 20 April 2026 at 91 FR 20913, and most of it took effect on 20 May. Seven sections covering network change notices and discontinuances waited for paperwork approval, and a notice published on 1 October set them live on 15 October.
Will my fax machine stop working on 15 October?
Not on that day. The rules change how carriers retire copper, not when your specific line goes. But they make it faster and quieter, so the day your line changes could come with less warning than before.
Do carriers have to make sure fax still works on the replacement service?
No. None of the five qualifying replacement services has to pass fax or modem tones, and the FCC declined a request to guarantee G.711 audio end to end even for alarm receivers.
What is T.38 and why does it matter for fax over IP?
T.38 is the standard for relaying fax over IP networks as data rather than as audio. It copes far better with packet loss and jitter than pushing modem tones through a voice codec, which is why a fax server that speaks T.38 is the reliable way to fax once copper is gone.
Can I keep my existing fax numbers?
Usually, yes. Fax numbers can normally be ported to a SIP trunk like any other number, and then routed to your fax server. Check with the receiving provider before your copper service is discontinued, not after.
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