The PSTN switch off, and the things nobody remembers are on a phone line

What is actually happening

Openreach is withdrawing the public switched telephone network, the copper-based system that has carried UK phone calls for over a century. The original date was December 2025. It has moved to January 2027, and that extension has done more harm than good, because a lot of businesses heard "delayed" and stopped planning.

Every analogue line stops working. Not degrades, stops. Anything relying on one needs replacing before then, and the replacement is not always a like-for-like swap.

The list is longer than the phones

Ask most businesses what is on a phone line and they will say the phones. Then you walk the building. Lift emergency alarms are almost always on a dedicated analogue line, and they are a legal requirement. Fire panel diallers, the same. Door entry systems, intruder alarm signalling, older card machines, fax lines that nobody has used in years but which are still billed, lone worker alarms, and in care settings the nurse call system.

Each of those has a different replacement path. Some move to a digital equivalent straightforwardly. Some need a GSM or 4G unit fitted. Some require the original manufacturer to attend, and their diaries for 2026 will not be empty.

The lift alarm is the one that catches people, because responsibility for it usually sits with the lift maintenance contract rather than with IT, so nobody checks it until the line stops.

What replaces it

For phones the answer is usually VoIP, either a hosted platform or Microsoft Teams calling through direct routing. Numbers port across and staff mostly notice nothing beyond a different handset or an app.

For alarms and diallers there is no single answer. Some manufacturers offer a digital module. Some devices need replacing outright. Some sites are better served by a 4G signalling unit, particularly where the broadband is unreliable, since a VoIP line that depends on the internet is only as good as the internet.

That last point matters more than it sounds. An analogue line kept working during a power cut. A VoIP phone does not, unless you have planned for it. For a lift alarm that distinction is the whole point of the device.

How to plan it

Start with an audit and do it now rather than in 2026. Walk the building and identify every device connected to a phone line, then check the bill for lines you have forgotten you are paying for, which in our experience is between one and three per site.

Order the list by consequence rather than by cost. A lift alarm that fails is a safety and legal problem. A fax line nobody uses is a cancellation. Nurse call is at the top of that list in any care setting.

Then contact manufacturers early for anything needing their involvement, because the closer this gets to 2027 the longer those lead times become.

The mistakes we see most

Assuming it is only the phones. It is not, and the non-phone devices are usually the ones with legal implications.

Waiting for the provider to raise it. Some will. Many will simply migrate your phone service and leave the lift alarm entirely alone, because it is not on their contract.

Treating the 2027 date as the deadline for starting. It is the deadline for finishing, and stop-sell means the ground is already moving.

Moving to VoIP without checking the internet connection. If your broadband drops twice a week now, it will drop your phones twice a week after migration. Failover is usually cheaper than the disruption.

What we would do about it

The first step is an audit, and it is the only part that needs doing urgently. Somebody walks the building and lists every device sitting on a line: the phones, the lift, the fire panel dialler, the intruder alarm, the door entry, the card machine, the fax nobody admits to, the line in the cupboard that nobody can account for. That last one is on almost every list we produce.

That audit costs £195 and takes a couple of hours. You keep it whether you do anything else with us or not, because it is a list of your own equipment and you should have one regardless. Most of the cost of this migration comes from discovering something in the last week rather than the first, and the audit is what moves the discovery forward.

After that it splits in two. The phones become a [cloud phone system](/business/telephony/), which is a straightforward piece of work with a published price. The lines themselves become [broadband or a leased line](/business/telecoms/), ordered early because that is the part nobody can hurry. The devices that are neither, the lift and the alarm and the door entry, are each a conversation with whoever maintains them, and we will have those conversations rather than leaving you to chase three contractors.

If you want the short version: ring us, we will spend two hours in your building, and you will know exactly what you are dealing with and what each piece costs. That is a far better position than most businesses will be in by the time this stops being optional.