AT&T Is Automating Away Jobs—and Its Old Telecom Empire | WIRED

Overview

AT&T Is Automating Away Jobs—and Its Old Telecom Empire

AT&T, which already shed more than half of its workforce over the past decade, says it's going to continue laying off staff as it gears up for the AI era. The telecommunications giant is also doing away with its old-school landline service and using artificial intelligence to automate some internal processes. All this downsizing is resulting in tangible benefits, including a considerable decrease in electricity usage, AT&T chief technology officer Jeremy Legg tells WIRED.

Details

“We’re not going to have the same headcount in five years as we do today,” Legg says, adding that comparing its staffing levels to that of peers plays a role in its decisionmaking. According to public financial disclosures, AT&T generated less revenue per employee last year than its competitors Verizon and T-Mobile, both of which have let go of workers in recent months.

If AT&T continues cutting jobs at the same pace as last year, when it shed 8,000 people, its workforce could approach 85,000 employees by 2030. A person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to speak publicly, described that number as the company’s target. AT&T called the figure inaccurate. In the first half of 2026, the telecom giant cut some 2,100 jobs.

By the end of the decade, AT&T wants to be seen as a “dramatically different” company with a “fantastic” fiber internet service and “kickass wireless network,” AT&T CEO John Stankey said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this month.

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AT&T’s transition provides a window into how legacy companies are trying to rebuild their operations as artificial intelligence tools become increasingly capable. AT&T has been around for 150 years, and it still plays a major role in the global economy. Legg says it handles about 15 percent of the world’s internet traffic, and the company employed nearly 131,000 people as of June. The question is whether it can drive innovation while also shedding costs and trying to keep up with the likes of Elon Musk.

Some of AT&T’s decades-old systems still run on paper records and require workers to do things manually, such as when a customer wants to disconnect their phone service. Some of that work is now being automated.

The telecom giant is using AI systems for customer service, to help identify locations for new cell phone towers, and to find maintenance issues on existing ones. A generative AI system AT&T calls Geo Modeler adjusts network settings on the fly during rare events like extreme weather. And like many companies, AT&T is using AI to generate software code and help manage service issues.

Starting next year, AT&T will replace physical hardware at thousands of central hubs with cloud software from Israeli startup Drive Nets, in which AT&T is an investor. The change will allow technicians to make adjustments remotely, such as when a customer requests faster internet. As more tasks are automated, a number of middle management and junior developer roles are expected to disappear.

Jobs in the US telecommunications industry have been declining for 25 years, according to government data, but the potential for AI to accelerate the trend and boost profits has captivated investors.

At the same time, AT&T is decommissioning the energy-intensive copper wire network that has long powered its landline telephone and DSL internet networks. Dropping these services generally requires approval from state and federal regulators, since rural areas may not have access to alternatives, and the company’s plans have been met by local protests in some communities. But 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,” Pascal Desroches, AT&T’s chief financial officer said at a different conference earlier this month.

AT&T declined to share exact figures about its electricity usage, but the company said in July that its total energy consumption fell 13.1 percent from 2020 through the end of 2025. It also noted that since 2024, shifting away from copper has saved AT&T 660,000 megawatt-hours worth of electricity, or 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 this month.

AT&T is focusing now on its high-speed fiber and wireless service that Stankey has described as “exactly the asset base we want as AI begins to shape the next era of connectivity.” But Wall Street has quizzed AT&T and its peers about looming competition from Musk’s Space X, which offers the nascent, but fast-growing satellite internet service Starlink.

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

Inside the company, the AI transition is being met with some hesitancy. As pandemic restrictions wound down, AT&T returned to requiring and enforcing five days in the office for most workers, leading to some natural attrition. Legg says AT&T’s culture was deteriorating, and companies focused on improving culture have returned to offices.

AT&T has “put gobs of money” into the office experience in places such as Dallas, Atlanta, and Seattle, including a summer childcare program and on-site mental health therapists, Legg says. He raves about the “amazing” coffee machine now outside his office.

AT&T views the investment as worthwhile because it expects to continue to hire even as it shrinks its overall workforce—just for a different mix of roles. People will be needed to develop and govern AI agents and oversee otherwise entirely automated processes, according to Legg. And even with copper in the rearview, AT&T will need technicians to maintain fiber lines.

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Key Takeaways

AT&T Is Automating Away Jobs—and Its Old Telecom Empire
AT&T, which already shed more than half of its workforce over the past decade, says it's going to continue laying off staff as it gears up for the AI era
“We’re not going to have the same headcount in five years as we do today,” Legg says, adding that comparing its staffing levels to that of peers plays a role in its decisionmaking
If AT&T continues cutting jobs at the same pace as last year, when it shed 8,000 people, its workforce could approach 85,000 employees by 2030
By the end of the decade, AT&T wants to be seen as a “dramatically different” company with a “fantastic” fiber internet service and “kickass wireless network,” AT&T CEO John Stankey said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this month