One of the most challenging and misunderstood topics in the UK telecoms market in 2025 is the impending analogue switch-off.  Despite years of planning by Ofcom and the telcos, there continues to be confusion about what is happening, when it is happening, and what you need to do to be ready. 

The good news is that we at TNC have been demystifying analogue switch-off, including PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) for some of the UK’s largest and most demanding organisations for years, so in this article we will tell you everything you need to know – the facts, the dates, the technologies and, most importantly, the lessons we’ve learned through leading lots of analogue switch-off programmes. 

What is certainly clear is that most organisations seem to have really woken up to the fact that managing the analogue switch-off process will be much more time-consuming and complicated than they originally thought, and comes with significant risk.  However, it also provides a really significant opportunity to clean up legacy estates, migrate to newer, better technologies, and even save money.  

The question many are asking though is how to do it – they worry they don’t know exactly what they’ve got deployed, they worry about what they should transition services to, and they worry about when they need to get this done, particularly with the end date being a bit of a moveable feast.  

Crucially, we all know the lines being switched off aren’t just phone lines, but even we have been surprised by the volume and variety of different services that they are being used for. As many people have long suspected, the combination of years of steadily adding to estates, combined with LOTS of shadow IT is creating a bigger than expected challenge for many organisations, but also a significant opportunity to simplify estates, deliver cost savings, and enable new capabilities for employees and customers.    

So, let’s get into the detail of exactly what you need to know, and let’s start with what’s happening – here’s how BT describes the switch-off: 

“Our existing traditional phone network is being replaced with a newer, shinier version. Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is an analogue, legacy platform using underground copper wires to enable communication. But this hardware can no longer sustain modern requirements and is become increasingly fragile and prone to failure. Ofcom’s recent  Connected Nations report  highlights that in 2024, the number of significant PSTN resilience incidents reported increased sharply by 45%.  So, we’re switching to a fully digital phone network using IP (Internet Protocol) technology. Every phone line in the UK will be digital, routing calls over IP rather than the traditional PSTN. Any remaining services not switched to the new digital network will be lost.” 

So, now we know what is happening, let’s look at the key dates you need to know:  

Sept 2023 – The Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) product set, which is the technical term for what is actually being switched-off, went to “stop sell”, meaning it is no longer possible to buy any more PSTN, ISDN, ADSL or FTTC services.  This is the beginning of a more concerted phase of the withdrawal of analogue services.  To date something over half of the 15 million lines have been migrated or ceased and Openreach are working on about 80,000 a week 

 

Jan 2027 – Analogue switch-off completed, but bear in mind that most service providers have been challenged by Openreach to complete their migrations for all non-vulnerable users by the end of 2025.  Whilst details of this are somewhat vague, TNC’s understanding is that most businesses would be classed as non-vulnerable (unless they are providing services to vulnerable people) and therefore may well still be subject to the end of 2025 deadline 

 

2030 – End of life for SOTAP for Analogue and exchange closure program starts in earnest  

Key Risks 

It is vital that everyone understands that all of the services that are being switched off are no longer regulated, which means providers are free to set the price for these services themselves, without the constraints previously in place from Ofcom.  The result is clear – in many cases, prices for these services are rising VERY quickly.  For example, at the bottom of the market, TNC considered the most competitive pricing for PSTN to be in the region of £10 per month but recently TNC has seen this pricing increased to above £30 per month.  For those organisations that continue to operate sizeable estates of these types of services, this could represent a considerable commercial risk.     In TNC’s experience, this is particularly high risk because these are the services that are the oldest and therefore the least well documented.  Therefore, not only is there a considerable risk of price increase, but considerable challenge in avoiding this risk, or even quantifying the risk.  This only underlines the criticality of getting these estates under control as quickly as possible. 

Replacement Technologies

Many organisations are finding that a lot of their analogue services that will be switched-off are already no longer required and they are ceasing these services as part of their preparations for the analogue switch-off.  Of course, most services will be retained and therefore organisations need to consider which technologies to use to replace their existing analogue services.  For many organisations, this is an opportunity to think afresh about these services, and potentially to migrate to totally new technologies.  For example, TNC is seeing many organisations migrate voice services from PSTN and ISDN to Teams voice or other UC services, and to migrate IoT and M2M services to cellular.  Another common approach is to replace the services being switch-off with one of the more “like for like” replacement services that are being rolled out by Openreach.  These replacement products are: 

• FTTP – this is the most functional of the replacement products, and is available now but not at all locations 

• SOGEA – this is equivalent to FTTC but with no analogue voice, and is available now but not at all locations 

• SOTAP – this is equivalent to ADSL, and is available now but not at all locations 

Beyond these products, Openreach has launched SOTAP for Analogue, which is aimed to be a temporary product providing a direct replacement for analogue PSTN services which are harder to migrate, however there are a number of other potential risks with this product: 

• At the present time, not all service providers appear to be offering SOTAP for Analogue, although BT and providers partnered with them are doing so 

• There may be restrictions to who can utilise this product as there is currently conflicting messaging about this product being a catchall product whilst at the same time discussion about it being a response to Critical National Infrastructure requirements and vulnerable consumers 

• It’s a temporary product with an indication of 2030 as its end of life

How To Maximise the Success of Your Migration 

TNC’s experience is that successful migration requires collaboration across functions and stakeholders. The foundation comes from the consolidation of data and cross-referencing information from internal sources, suppliers, end users and third-party organisations into a single base that can be interrogated and provide the foundation for the overall plan.  The following are the key steps TNC would recommend:  

• Liaise with known suppliers to obtain access to relevant contract information, billing data and any other asset lists 

• Identify other potential suppliers – engage with finance to gather data on all telephony payments in order to reach out to the various other smaller suppliers that individual sites may be using 

• Liaise with other internal stakeholders to obtain site lists, network diagrams or billing data they have available 

• Create detailed inventories of the current supplier services 
• Once you’ve got a complete view, begin to group the services in order to provide some recommended actions 

Lessons Learned 

Having completed a number of these types of projects very successfully, we have identified a number of surprising findings, including:   

• The number of lines that can be ceased is higher than you might expect.  It’s often not the “typical 10%”, but more like 30-40%   

• We are often finding that other departments (facilities, estates etc.) have already replaced their use cases for analogue services with new technologies, but they’ve never ceased their old analogue lines, which is what is driving the higher cease rates 
• Critically, the migration of services you want to retain from analogue services to the replacement technologies is much more complicated than most organisations realise.  It’s not as simple as just cease or migrate – the migration may well involve having to develop new working patterns, dovetail into other programmes, deal with infrastructure shortfalls such as re-cabling, and many other challenges.  This is the prime reason why TNC is saying to all organisations to move quickly with their analogue switch-off programmes because mitigations take time, and time is starting to run out 

Upside Opportunities 

Whilst many organisations are struggling with the complexities of the analogue switch-off, it is also created a lot of upside opportunities.  Here are some examples:  

• Cost Savings – through removal of unused lines and/or convergence of technologies 

• Simplification – reducing number of suppliers and services makes managing retained services easier 

• Technology upgrades – the replacement technologies are almost always functionally superior to the legacy analogue services they are replacing 

How can TNC help?

TNC has been developing a toolkit to help our customers navigate all of these challenges, and to enable them to de-risk, and accelerate their programme for analogue switch-off.   This toolkit includes a unique platform called Clarity which enables all stakeholders to have a single view of the programme, a “single version of the truth” inventory, and automates many aspects of migration including cost control, site visibility, actions updates, and benefits realisation.   Of course, this toolkit is built on a fantastic team of highly experienced consultants who can lead and support your transformation to make it as successful as possible.   Get in touch with us to set up a personalised session and we will reveal more of what we have found and discuss your specific challenges and how we can help – click here to arrange a call with one of our experts: https://www.networkcollective.co.uk/lets-talk/   

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