Some time before the end of January 2027, somebody at your telecoms provider will send you a letter giving you at least four weeks’ notice that your phone line is changing. Most businesses will read it, do the minimum, and plug the same handset into a router instead of a wall socket.
That is a wasted opportunity, and it is a fairly expensive one.
The analogue network is being retired whether you engage with it or not. Which means every UK business is going to spend money and attention on its phone setup in the next sixteen months regardless. The only real decision is whether that money buys you the same thing you already had, or something that actually answers the calls you currently miss.
What is actually happening, and when
The UK’s analogue telephone network, the PSTN, is being switched off. Calls move to Voice over IP, delivered over a broadband connection instead of over copper.
According to BT’s own digital switchover page ↗, the copper infrastructure is being retired by the end of January 2027, more than three million UK households have already moved, and customers get at least four weeks’ notice before their own switch. BT’s replacement consumer service is branded Digital Voice.
Two things follow that matter more for a business than for a household.
Your number does not change. This is the fear that stops people engaging, and it is unfounded. Migration keeps the number.
Anything else plugged into that line is your problem to check. BT is explicit that customers with devices connected to their landline need to review what they have and whether it works on a digital line. In a home that means an alarm panel. In a business it is usually a longer list.
Ofcom’s guidance on the future of landline calls ↗ sets out the consumer protections around the migration, including the requirement that providers support people who rely on a landline and have no mobile signal.
The audit nobody does until it breaks
Work through this list before your provider contacts you rather than after. Every item on it is something that has historically run over a copper pair and may stop working on a digital line without a replacement.
| Device on the line | What usually happens | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Card payment terminal | Older dial-up terminals stop working; IP or mobile terminals are fine | High |
| Intruder or fire alarm signalling | Needs a digital or dual-path replacement, and this is often contractual | High |
| Lift emergency line | Legally required to work, and frequently forgotten | High |
| Door entry system | Common failure, particularly older analogue panels | Medium |
| Fax | Unreliable over VoIP; move to email or a fax-to-email service | Medium |
| Franking machine | Older units dial out to top up; check with the supplier | Low |
| Cordless handsets | Usually fine, but base stations need mains power | Low |
The two that catch businesses out are the lift line and the alarm signalling, because both are safety systems, both are usually on a contract with a third party, and neither is anybody’s day job to think about.
There is also a power question that copper solved for free. An analogue phone drew its power from the line and worked in a power cut. A VoIP phone plugged into a router does not. If your business genuinely needs to make a call during an outage, that is now a mobile, a UPS on the router, or both, and it is a decision rather than an assumption.
The part worth actually thinking about
Everything above is compliance work. It costs money and returns nothing except not being broken. It is also not the interesting half.
The interesting half is that once your calls run over IP rather than copper, what happens to an incoming call becomes software, and software can be changed. On copper, “the phone rang and nobody picked up” was close to a law of physics. On VoIP it is a configuration choice.
This is the thing to notice. For decades the reason small businesses lost bookings to missed calls was infrastructural. It is now a decision you are making by default.
So while you are in there:
- Find out how many calls you actually miss. Most VoIP providers report this and most businesses have never looked. The number is almost always higher than the owner’s estimate, and it is concentrated in exactly the hours when the person who answers the phone is busy with a customer.
- Decide what an unanswered call should do. Ring on to a mobile, deflect to a text with a booking link, go to an AI voice agent that can check the diary, or go to voicemail. Voicemail is the default and it is the worst of the four, because most callers do not leave one.
- Connect the phone to the diary. A call that ends in a confirmed booking rather than a note on a pad is the whole point. Our guide to automated phone booking systems covers the four ways to do that and what each costs.
Why the timing is the argument
Any of this could have been done at any point in the last five years. Almost nobody did, for a straightforward reason: changing a phone system is disruptive, and disruption needs a trigger.
The switch-off is that trigger, supplied for free. You are already going to have the conversation with a provider, already going to test the equipment, already going to have staff notice that something changed. Doing the useful work in the same window costs a fraction of what it costs as a standalone project six months later, because the disruption has already been paid for.
The businesses that will get nothing out of the next sixteen months are the ones that treat it purely as an IT chore to be survived. The ones that get something will treat it as the software decision it now is.
If your phone, diary and customer records are three separate things held together by a person, that is the underlying problem and the switch-off just makes it visible. Our post on signs your business has outgrown its software covers how to tell, and what a business contact AI agent actually does covers the option at the more capable end.
A sensible order of work
- Now. List everything physically connected to a phone line on your premises. Include the things that are not phones.
- Now. Contact the third parties who own the safety systems, the alarm company and the lift maintainer, and ask what they need. These have the longest lead times and the least flexibility.
- Before your provider writes to you. Check your broadband. VoIP call quality is a function of your connection, and a business running voice over a consumer grade line with no redundancy is making a choice it has not thought about.
- When you migrate. Decide what an unanswered call does, and set it to something other than voicemail.
- After migration. Look at the missed call figures for a month, then decide whether the answer needs to be smarter than a divert.
Steps one to three are compulsory. Steps four and five are where the return is.
Frequently asked questions
When is the UK landline switch off?
The analogue PSTN network is being retired by the end of January 2027. Individual businesses and households are migrated on a rolling basis before then, with at least four weeks’ notice from the provider.
Will my business phone number change?
No. Migration to a digital service keeps the existing number. This is the most common concern and it is unfounded, but confirm it in writing with your provider when they contact you.
What stops working when the landline switches off?
Anything that dials out over the analogue line rather than being a phone. The common ones in a business are older card payment terminals, alarm signalling, lift emergency lines, door entry panels, fax machines and some franking machines. Audit these early, because the safety related ones involve third party contracts and have the longest lead times.
Will my phone work in a power cut after the switch?
Not by itself. An analogue phone drew power from the line; a VoIP handset depends on a powered router. If your business needs to make calls during an outage, plan for a mobile or a battery backup on the router. Ofcom requires providers to support customers who rely on a landline and have no mobile signal.
Do I need to do anything before my provider contacts me?
Strictly, no. Practically, yes. The audit of connected equipment and the conversations with alarm and lift companies take longer than the four weeks’ notice allows, so doing them now removes the time pressure entirely.
Is this a good time to change how we take bookings?
It is the best time you will get. The disruption of changing the phone system is already happening and already budgeted for, and once calls run over IP, what happens to an unanswered call becomes a software setting rather than a fixed constraint. Adding booking or call handling in the same window is far cheaper than doing it as a separate project later.
The one sentence version
The switch-off will make you spend money on your phones. Spend a little more and stop losing the calls you have been losing for years.
If you want to work out what that looks like for your business, or whether a booking flow attached to the phone is worth building, get in touch and we will tell you honestly whether it is.