ESG & Investing
Buried Fortune of Old Copper Wire Is Worth Billions to Telcos
- Companies are working to recover at least $7 billion of copper
- ‘It’s an enormous commercial opportunity,’ TXO’s Evans says
AT&T Inc., BT Group Plc, Orange SA and their global peers are preparing to tap a rich new source of revenue: their old copper wiring.
In the migration to fiber-optic cable, telecommunications companies could recover as much as 800,000 metric tons of copper over the next decade, worth more than $7 billion at today’s prices, according to estimates from TXO, a UK-based firm that provides engineering services to the industry.