AT&T has revealed that 872 feet of copper cable was stolen back in May in Houston, Texas.

In a filing to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the carrier noted that it had identified a cable failure in an underground manhole in the Forrest Lake area of Houston on May 25.

After investigating the incident, AT&T discovered that approximately 872 feet of copper cable had been stolen from a manhole at the intersection of Bingle Rd. and West Tidwell Rd.

The incident caused an outage for the one AT&T Residential Local Service line, a service commonly referred to as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), that AT&T serves in the area.

AT&T stated in its filing that it would cost approximately $25,000 to replace the stolen copper cable.

As such, AT&T has written to the FCC to say that it has suspended offering its legacy TDM-based voice service to the one impacted customer near the Forrest Lake area of Houston.

The carrier said that it does not intend to restore copper services. Instead, AT&T has offered its AT&T Phone – Advanced, an IP-based, over-the-top voice service as a replacement.

"It does not make economic sense or serve the public interest for AT&T to spend its time and money to restore such a small portion of its legacy network serving only one customer especially when AT&T plans to retire the vast majority of its legacy copper network, including the facilities in this area, within a few years," said AT&T in its filing.

Indeed, the carrier has said it's in the public interest for the carrier to "redeploy its limited resources toward the next-generation networks necessary to compete in today’s communications marketplace."

AT&T said that it wrote to the impacted customer on July 1 to inform them of its intent not to restore services, while offering alternatives.

According to AT&T, the customer also has other options available to them for voice service, including mobile service from rival major wireless carriers.

The carrier has outlined plans to retire its copper network by 2029, amid the company's major fiber build-out across the US.

AT&T notably signed a $850 million sale-leaseback deal earlier this year to sell a portfolio of Central Offices at more than 70 properties across the US.

AT&T told DCD earlier in the year that it spends $6 billion annually to keep its copper services running, a figure that it wants to cut down and invest in future technologies.