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HAWLEY — Jody Stewart does not have a cellphone, nor does she want one.

But if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves Verizon’s plans to end copper landline service, the 80-year-old Hawley resident fears she may have to.

“I don’t really want a cellphone,” said Stewart, a longtime poet who has lived in town since 1994 and is also known as Pamela Stewart and Jody Cothey. “I feel like I’m being bullied.”

Earlier this month, Verizon filed a proposal with the FCC to end Plain Old TelephoneService (“POTS”) in portions of California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, effective Nov. 30. Verizon said copper landline service is expensive to maintain, too slow to meet modern needs and not as many people use the service as the system could support.

“Currently, Verizon’s network could serve over 28 million locations in these states with POTS. However, the overwhelming majority of consumers from these states who could subscribe to POTS service from Verizon do not — only approximately 750,000 residential and business locations, or 2.7%, still subscribe to legacy voice services,” Verizon wrote in the FCC filing. “Copper infrastructure is too slow to meet modern needs, many decades old, costly to maintain, and vulnerable to damage and theft.”

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The filing states that current POTS subscribers will be transitioned to fiber-based service, or other wireless alternatives. Letters the company sent to residents state that they can keep their existing phone numbers and that 911 calls would continue “seamlessly” in the transition. The company notes that the transition would “free up billions” that could be reinvested into improving and expanding modern systems across the nation.

“Because it makes no sense to maintain a ubiquitous, costly legacy network that consumers have largely abandoned, we seek to transition customers to modern services provided by Verizon or another provider,” the FCC filing reads. “We will work to ensure that this is a smooth transition for copper-based POTS customers in the discontinuance area.”

An earlier filing from August requested to end the service in portions of Arizona, Delaware, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.