UK ISP Spitfire Launch PSTN Switch Off Migration Service for Businesses
Business telecommunications and UK broadband ISP Spitfire has today launched its new PSTN Switch Off Migration service, which is designed to provide both technical support and expertise to UK businesses making the move from the old Public Switched Telephone Network to all-IP (digital).
Just to recap. The legacy phone switch-off was last year delayed to 31st January 2027 in order to give broadband, phone, telecare providers, councils and consumers more time to adapt (details). The main focus of this was the 1.8 million UK people who use vital home telecare systems (e.g. elderly, disabled – vulnerable users), which aren’t always compatible with digital phone services because telecare providers were slow to adapt.
However, this overlooks that, for everybody else, many providers will still be working to shift customers off the old PSTN network well before the new deadline. Openreach’s recent decision to significantly raise the prices on their legacy products, which will be introduced from October 2026, is another big incentive to make the switch sooner rather than later (here).
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Spitfire has thus attempted to create a package which makes transition “smooth, flexible and seamless“. The new Switch Off Migration Service includes offering a choice of technologies to ensure every customer has a suitable service for both connectivity and telephony, while ensuring that they migrate to the new services as smoothly as possible. Spitfire also keeps business leaders informed of the elements of the project that impact them so they can make unrushed, informed decisions.
Features of the Switch Off Migration Service
– No migration charge from legacy analogue line, ISDN or broadband circuits.
– Choice of minimum contract periods from 3 months +.
– Digital voice line with call bundle included.
– Quality of Service options with performance SLAs up to ‘Ethernet’ standard.
– Upgrade to super fast fibre on availability within minimum term.
Harry Bowlby, MD of Spitfire Network Services, said:
“Although this revised date buys more time and indeed may now seem some way off, the huge task to move to an all-IP future proofed service remains. Customers should still aim to take action now, as the announcement only provides a one year extension and we are still likely to experience resource bottlenecks as the months go by. As we’ve seen, prices from OpenReach and BT to service providers for certain legacy products will rise by up to 100% by October 2026, so our message is clear move now, avoid the rush and protect your business communications.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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A fanfare to launch a migration service for business customers with three weeks left of December 2025?
The 13-month postponement was never supposed to excuse prevarication by business providers.
Perhaps the final line of the statement should have been “move now, avoid the rush, and protect your business communications provider from the 20%, ah 60%, oh no 100% wholesale prices it should have seen coming when it sold you the contract.”
One of the issues is the staggered nature of migrations, especially for small businesses, who are waiting for fibre to become available. At present if you only a copper connection available you have two options:
1) Install a DSL router and ATA or IP phones. If you install this now then the network will at a minimum require someone technical to make changes when fibre becomes available, but most likely the router will need to be replaced. That’s if you can even get a fast enough DSL speed to support all the phones you need to use at once along with internet traffic.
2 Wait for fibre and then sort it all out at once without wasting time and money on step 1 remembering of course that businesses often have many more dependencies and security configuration issues for broadband connections and can’t usually afford downtime.
I suspect the majority of people still using the PSTN are in group 1.
What business doesn’t already have Internet connectivity? A SIP channel uses 100kbps. 3Mbps replaces an entire ISDN30 and no business that has 30 voice channels is running all their connectivity on DSL.
For a small business there’s no need to have a special router or SIP server, just some IP handsets from your SIP provider who will manage all the settings for you. That’s assuming you don’t my do away with physical phones all together and just run a soft client on a computer or tablet, or use the telephone features in Teams.