New Report Examines the UK’s Public Switched Telephone Network Switch Off

A new independent research report has been published by BroadbandSwitch.uk, which provides a fairly detailed and useful overview of Britain’s move to switch-off the old analogue phone network on 31st January 2027, which was previously delayed from the original end of 2025 deadline in order to protect vulnerable consumers.

Just to recap. 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). But at present around 1.9 million UK lines are yet to switch to a digital alternative and the focus of the remaining effort is largely on helping those who use vital home telecare systems (e.g. elderly, disabled – vulnerable users), which aren’t always compatible with newer IP-based phone services (telecare providers were slow to adapt).

The Last Dial Tone paper doesn’t say anything that we haven’t reported on before, but we do think it’s one of the better overarching summaries. The report’s modelling also estimates that a residual tail of between 150,000 and 400,000 lines will not be migrated in time, although Openreach are expecting something more in the high tens of thousands.

The good news, as recently reported (here), is that consumer lines won’t face a hard disconnection on the deadline and there will be an emergency solution for those who fail to migrate. Business lines, however, won’t benefit from the same protections and will need to get a move on.

Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith, Report Author, said:

My hypothesis, stated plainly so it can be marked against events: the headline date will hold, but completion will be achieved partly on paper. A residual tail of lines, our modelling suggests somewhere between 150,000 and 450,000, will not be migrated in time. Instead they will be caught by transitional products that BT and Openreach have quietly pre-built for exactly this purpose: an emergency-calls-only line called EVAc, and analogue-style stopgaps known as PDPL and SOTAP that run to around 2030. The platform retires on schedule. A minority keeps a dial tone through the side door. That is a soft landing, not a clean finish, and not a delay.

Why lean this way? Three reasons run through this report. First, the network is failing in plain sight: it consumes around 1% of British energy usage, suffered more than 2,600 major incidents in a single year, and runs on parts nobody manufactures any more. Second, the date is a commercial decision, not a law, and the government has said it will not legislate a pause. Third, and decisively, the escape hatch already exists. The argument that forced the 2023 pause, that vulnerable people would be cut off, has been structurally defused by products designed to make sure nobody is.

We put the probability of this soft landing at 72%, a formal further delay at 23%, and a genuinely clean completion at just 5%. Part Three shows the working, and page 26 publishes the exact criteria by which we will score ourselves after the event. Authority is cheap to claim and expensive to demonstrate. We have chosen the expensive route.