In case anybody missed it after being buried in yesterday’s BT results (here). The plan to withdraw BT and Openreach’s old copper-based analogue line services (PSTN phones and WLR), which was due to complete by December 2025, has been delayed until 31st January 2027 in order to give broadband ISPs, telecare providers and consumers more time to adapt.
The announcement wasn’t particularly well signposted in BT’s results, but if you read the full report it said this: “Following the industry-wide pause to non-voluntary migrations in December 2023, we now expect to have migrated all customers off the PSTN by the end of January 2027, allowing us to align the programme with full fibre broadband customer upgrades where available.” Openreach then promptly mirrored this move (here).
NOTE: Openreach are withdrawing their old Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) products as part of this change, while BT are retiring their related Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
The delay to the industry-led migration had been expected for a while now (here) and, despite BT’s results merely linking it to their full fibre (FTTP) broadband roll-out (i.e. reaching 25 million premises by December 2026), it’s already well understood that the accompanying transition to digital phone alternatives was going through a bit of a rough patch.
In place of PSTN/WLR, many comms providers are introducing Internet Protocol (IP) based digital phone / voice services, which require a broadband connection in order to work (either via copper or full fibre). Put another way, you plug your existing handset into the back of a broadband router (assuming it has a phone port) or Analogue Terminal Adapter (ATA), rather than the old wall socket. Simple enough? Not so for everybody.
A Problematic Migration
However, the new generation of IP based phone solutions do have the odd caveat, aside from being a little bit more complex to setup. For example, the new services are not remotely powered (i.e. if there’s a power cut, they go down, but ISPs can provide a limited battery backup solution upon request) and often don’t work properly with older alarm or telecare monitoring systems.
The issue of poor telecare support is largely the fault of telecare and alarm providers (i.e. failing to upgrade their systems), but this doesn’t change the reality that nearly 2 million people use these vital systems in the UK (e.g. elderly, disabled, and vulnerable people). Often these exist in rural and isolated areas, where mobile services may also go down during power cuts. Ofcom are separately reviewing mobile resilience, but complex issues of cost and wayleaves may yet create some barriers to improving that.
NOTE: BT and other providers have already paused all non-voluntary migrations, temporarily moving from an opt-out to an opt-in approach, with customers asked to confirm they’re happy to go ahead via text (
here).
Suffice to say, there was a high risk that the digital phone switch-over could put a significant number of vulnerable people’s lives at risk, which was tragically underlined by the recently reported deaths of two “vulnerable” Virgin Media Phone customers (here). This is alleged to have occurred after their health alarms failed, following the switch-off of their old analogue phone services. Ofcom are currently investigating VM’s handling of the digital phone migration (here).
The result is that the transition to digital phone solutions has been delayed from 31st December 2025 to 31st January 2027.
An Openreach spokesperson told ISPreview:
“BT has announced its decision to move out the date for switching off the PSTN – the old copper based analogue phone network.
In response to this – Openreach has taken the decision to align the withdrawal of our products that work over it – which come under the umbrella term of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR), with the new switch off date of 31 January 2027.
Openreach will continue to work with its Communications Provider (CP) customers to help them migrate their customers onto new digital services and off the legacy network as safely and smoothy as possible.
We also recognise there’s more work to do to reach and mobilise the minority of non-engaged CPs to migrate their customers off WLR proactively and safely.”
However, it is important to stress that the old services will still have to be withdrawn eventually (most lines should have transitioned before the new deadline), which is because keeping the old analogue services going would be both extremely expensive (i.e. maintaining a large network to support a minority of users) and highly risky – due to the ancient kit no longer being fully supported by many manufacturers.
On the upside, Openreach and BT have recently begun to pilot a new SOTAP for Analogue product (here), which is a phone line service that does NOT require broadband to work and can harness modern networks to function similarly to the older analogue service.
The solution, once introduced, would not be available for new service provisions (only existing / vulnerable customers) and is intended to be a temporary product (possibly running until around 2030). In theory, this would allow more time for people and networks to adapt, but it won’t be launched until toward the end of 2024 and the new delay should make this a little smoother to implement.
