Virgin Media O2 UK See Success of Digital Phone Switch and Telecare Trial

Broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) has today released a progress update on their Digital Landline Switchover (DLS) programme (i.e. migrating old analogue landline phones to IP-based services). This revealed some positive results from their recent trial with the telecare advisory body, TSA, which provided enhanced support to telecare users.

Just to recap. The United Kingdom is home to around 1.8 million people who use telecare devices / alarms in the UK (e.g. elderly, disabled, and vulnerable people), many of which are located in rural and isolated areas. Sadly, a lot of those telecare systems haven’t yet been updated to work with the newer Internet Protocol (IP) based voice / phone services, which is despite the telecare industry having plenty of years to prepare.

Virgin Media responded to this in early September by launching a 10-week trial alongside the TSA (here), which among other things saw them working with the Stockport-based telecare provider, Carecall, to offer dedicated support to telecare users as their services are migrated.

The trial itself essentially made it easier to identify telecare customers (i.e. not all such users have informed ISPs of their status), as well as offering targeted communications / support and also provided joint visits with teams from both Virgin Media and Carecall (e.g. checking devices are working as they should and fixing problems etc.). This is said to have been a “phenomenal success“.

Gareth Lister, Director of Customer Products at VMO2, said:

“The trial was a phenomenal success with 90% of customers agreeing to migration appointments, and almost all (96%) being migrated successfully.

Importantly, of the 191 customers identified through the data share, 31 had not previously been identified by Virgin Media O2 as telecare users. This is despite a review of all call records from Carecall’s alarm receiving centre (ARC).

Carecall’s analysis showed that these customers were all using digital SIM-based telecare devices (operating independently from Virgin Media O2’s telephony service) which explains why no ARC call records were detected.

So, without the data sharing agreement, these 31 customers would not have received the extra support wrapper of the trial.

Together, we learnt a lot about how we can best support telecare customers to engage with the essential migration and illustrated what can be achieved in partnership.”

The operator is now “looking to carry out further trials in other parts of the country” and, as part of that, they’ve run a series of workshops with local authorities and telecare alarm providers – attended by around 40 organisations from across the country – “where we’ve shared our learnings and sought views on how this approach could be adapted for them.”

During this process, Virgin Media has also written again to every local authority they operate in, encouraging others to follow in Stockport Homes’ footsteps by establishing similar data-sharing agreements. But the broadband and phone provider warns that “more than a hundred local authorities” have either not yet formed a data agreement or didn’t even respond to their letters.

Suffice to say, Virgin Media has once again reiterated their call for the Government to establish a ‘Telecare Charter‘, which they say must “clearly set out a range of commitments for the telecare sector and local authorities which requires them to work with our industry to ensure nobody is left behind“. On the other hand, while all of this work is good, it’s still something that both the telecare and telecoms industries should have started years ago.

Meanwhile, Openreach is doing something similar to the aforementioned trial via their own Prove Telecare Trial, which started at the end of July 2024. The old phone networks were originally supposed to be completely switched off by the end of 2025, although vulnerable users were recently given more time by BT and Openreach – the deadline for migration in related households has been extended to 31st Jan 2027 (here and here).