Analogue Switch-Off

The UK’s Telephone network is predominantly owned and operated by Openreach.

Openreach will be retiring the analogue phone network at the end of 2025, indeed some exchanges have already been retired.

Why is this happening?

Over the past few years, there has been a shift in the way businesses operate with more and more companies moving away from legacy products – moving towards new & efficient technologies.

Analogue phone systems are expensive to maintain, as traditional phone systems require costly hardware and infrastructure, along with ongoing maintenance costs.  Engineers who can maintain these systems are becoming few and far between, also it is becoming increasingly difficult to source parts for these systems, should they break down.  Companies were paying vast amounts of money each year to maintain these systems.  We have seen large companies paying £750+ each month for the Line Rental and maintenance of these basic systems.

One of the big changes have been switch from traditional PSTN & ISDN telephone systems to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems.

VoIP has been around for a number of years, however people were reluctant to change as they stuck with the traditional analogue PSTN & ISDN systems.

The benefit of VoIP are increased flexibility and mobility.   With traditional analogue systems, the employees are typically tied to a specific location, as the physical phone needs to be connected to a specific line.

With VoIP, that’s not the case – employees can make and receive calls from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing for greater flexibility & productivity.  This is especially important in today’s world, where many employees work remotely or need to be connected to the phone system as part of their job.

VoIP systems offer a whole host of features and benefits that are simply not available with traditional analogue telephone systems, for example Softphone – The SoftPhone allows you to use your Mobile Phone as a fully featured phone system – Ideal for people who are out and about.

Timescales

2023 – Openreach stops selling PSTN based copper products initially at an exchange level and then nationally.  Openreach will adopt a phased approach to stop selling copper broadband and telephony products. From September 5th 2023, this will apply across the UK.

2025 – Retiring the old analogue phone network.

What Should I do Next?

Give us a call, we provide high quality VoIP telephone systems using business grade equipment, such as Poly, Grandstream & Yealink.  Our PBX is in the cloud so the only equipment you will need is the phone itself.  We’ll work with you to identify what you need from your system and we will implement and install the features you need.

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