Openreach is warning British businesses that the old phone network shuts down in less than a year – with half a million commercial lines still unmigrated.
BT Group’s infrastructure arm is switching to an all-digital, IP-based service over fiber. To speed migration, it’s hiking charges on legacy products.
Deadlines for the cutoff have slipped several times, but the telecoms giant is now bent on finally burying the copper-based public switched telephone network (PSTN) by January 31, 2027, and Openreach is already working to kill off any services that use it.
Those products come under the umbrella term of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR), and Openreach stopped selling them nationwide in 2023 to prepare the way.
Openreach claims all technical barriers to migration – including protections for vulnerable telecare users – are resolved and the deadline is “locked in,” so BT customers need to make sure they are ready.
Biz customers are being offered special pricing on migrations to SOGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access – basically broadband without a phone service). And to reinforce the message, Openreach is about to start upping charges to service providers and companies still operating legacy business lines. From April 1, prices will rise 20 percent. Come July 1, they will go up a further 40 percent.
From October 1, there will be another 40 percent hike, meaning that any businesses still holding out will then pay double the rental cost for their legacy lines compared to last year.
This will be your final wake-up call before PSTN is terminated in January. Any customer that hasn’t made the switch by then will lose service altogether.
“The PSTN analog network is obsolete, becoming harder to maintain and significantly more expensive to run,” claimed Openreach Director of All-IP James Lilley.
“We are passing those costs on to providers who continue to sell legacy products. If your business is still on this copper service, you will start to pay a premium for a service that will be switched off,” he added.
“Most major communications providers moved their customers to digital long ago. If your provider hasn’t contacted you, you need to ask why.”
Lilley claimed Openreach spent the last year ensuring telecare customers can be switcherd via a “Prove Telecare” service. This was one of the reasons for delays to the switch-off date.
Openreach says it is trying to ensure service providers can migrate vulnerable customers using fixed-line telecare devices, such as health-related alarms, to new digital or IP voice services.
Yet some domestic customers, especially older citizens, do not have broadband and don’t want it. The Register was previously assured these users will not be switched to a digital line “until they are able to.”
This involves a pre-digital phone line (PDPL) service where equipment is installed in the local telephone exchange to allow them to continue to use their old phone line as before.
This is only intended to provide “interim connectivity” until sometime around 2030, when customers will be required to move over to Digital Voice or an alternative.
Openreach told us there are several possibilities for consumers without broadband. If there is fiber available to the property, customers will likely be migrated to SOGEA, and given a router to plug their phone into.
If fiber isn’t available, they will likely be switched to SOTAP for Analogue (Single Order Transitional Access Product), a digital service that works in the exchange and emulates a PSTN line (see PDPL above).
If a customer does nothing, Openreach says they will most likely end up on its Emergency Voice Access (EVAC), a “no frills” version of SOTAP.
Customers are advised to contact their service provider to ensure they continue to receive their phone service. ®
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