Buried Fortune of Copper Wire Is Worth Billions to Telcos (1)

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.

“We’ve got all of this material, sitting redundant,” said David Evans, who runs asset recovery at TXO. The firm is working with BT, and Evans says discussions ...