The phone companies never throw anything away. There are secret warehouses full of antique equipment just in case it might someday be needed again.
Don't know if it's still true, but the old Public Service Valmont Power plant in Boulder CO (now Excel Energy, I guess) back in early 1970s had a large warehouse-type roomful of old equipment including dozens of old 110 volt eddy current house meters which were one-by-one being replaced by modern units.
I went out there on a tip from a friend about it because I wanted one for grins and giggles (actually to measure actual appliance usage --long before the handy all-electronic Kill-O-Watt units
.) They gave me one for free, and it even had a tag with the house it came from (on Spruce Street in Boulder Colorado.)
The point there is that they also had tons of old equipment, including lots of 1/3 and 1/2 HP fan motors, which they said they would replace routinely on a regular basis to avoid failure in their high temperature environments.
Yes, I got one for something else.
But it would appear that outfits do retain old equipment for JIC (Just In Case) reasons.
Terry