Team Partners Telecommunications

An update on copper wire-based telecoms...

Posted on Jun 26, 2024  | Tags: 2025, phone lines, phone systems, calls

There’s something about being a harbinger of doom that can cause the author of that discontent either an element of glee or a sense of “I’m, sorry to have to tell you, but...”, and we were definitely in the second of those two camps when, back in January of this year, we reminded you about ‘the soon-to-be-upon-us demise of copper wire-based telecoms’. At the time,  and at the time of our original blog on this subject in September of 2023, all copper line services were going to be withdrawn by the end of 2025. Guess what, it’s all been postponed!

Practically speaking this perhaps shouldn’t come as a great surprise, after all, where, other than in this blog, have you heard about the great turn-off happening at all? Anyway, with no further ado and with the huge potential for it to be postponed again we have the honour to announce that the switch-off date for ISDN and PSTN line and broadband services has been extended to the 31^st of January 2027.

But wait...

Didn’t Openreach tell us that the PSTN was simply not going to work after December 2025? Yes, they did, but it wasn’t the entire truth. What IS the case is that due to the age of the equipment it’s becoming increasingly less reliable, which is why countries around the world are phasing it out.  Openreach tells us that they are doing everything possible to support a smooth transition and, the reality is, the best way to ensure continuity of service is to migrate customers off legacy services as quickly as possible. Incidentally, Openreach’s ‘Stop Sell’ policy remains in place, they won’t be resuming sales of PSTN and ISDN services.

There is, however, an important upside to this delay. Those of you who read either of our two previous blogs on this subject will remember we flagged the risk of this switch-off to vulnerable customers who rely on 100% full-time connection for their security. The delay in implementing this switch-over is giving Communications Providers more time to identify these potentially vulnerable customers and to share this data with councils. It’s  hoped that it will also give Openreach the time they need  to grow their FTTP network to the point that customers who need 100% guaranteed connectivity will not have to engage a temporary solution as they wait for FTTP to reach their part of the world.

We shall keep you informed!