Openreach has issued a blunt reminder to the UK telecoms industry: the legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN) will be retired on 31 January 2027, and the deadline will not be postponed. In a letter circulated to communications providers in recent days, as the countdown passed the 100–day mark, the network operator said businesses that delay migration risk significant disruption and unnecessary cost — and that leaving it until the last minute could make it harder to secure the engineering support needed before the deadline arrives.
The message is aimed squarely at the connections that have not yet moved. According to Openreach, the straightforward migrations are largely done. What remains are the more complex lines that sit behind point–of–sale terminals, fire and security alarms, and personal care alarms for elderly and vulnerable people. These are the services where a failed or rushed migration has real consequences: a card terminal that cannot take payments, an alarm that cannot reach its monitoring centre, a vulnerable person whose pendant no longer calls for help.
Counting from today, there are 89 calendar days until 31 January 2027, and only around 60 working days once weekends and the Christmas and New Year bank holidays are taken out. For a business that still has analogue lines in its estate, that is not much time to audit, plan, coordinate suppliers, book engineers and test.
What Openreach has said
The letter to communications providers restates a date the industry has been working towards for years, but with a sharper tone. The PSTN will be officially retired on 31 January 2027. There will be no postponement.
James Lilley, Openreach’s Director of All–IP, set out where things stand: “The straightforward migrations have largely been completed. What’s left are the complex connections that underpin critical operations, requiring careful planning, supplier coordination, and thorough testing. We are urging businesses to act now, audit their remaining analogue services, and work with their communications provider on a migration plan today.”
Openreach also warned commercial customers directly. Delaying migration, it said, risks significant disruption and unnecessary costs. Leaving it until the final weeks could make it harder to secure the engineering support required before the deadline. In other words, the constraint is not only the date — it is the finite number of engineers, appointments and specialist suppliers available in the run–up to it.
The financial pressure is already in place. Earlier in 2026, Openreach increased its charges to service providers and companies still running legacy business lines, which are now paying double the rental compared with the previous year. Every month an old line stays in service costs more than it used to.
Most businesses moved their main phone numbers to VoIP or Teams some time ago. The risk now sits in the lines nobody thinks of as “phones”: the fire alarm panel’s communicator, the intruder alarm’s signalling line, the lift emergency phone, the door entry system, an older card terminal, a franking machine, a building management modem or a care alarm in sheltered accommodation you manage. If any of these still dial out over a copper line, they may stop working when that line is migrated or switched off. Find them before the deadline finds them for you.
What happens to lines that have not moved
Openreach’s approach for customers without a fibre connection is to switch them to SOTAP — the Single Order Transitional Access Product. Under SOTAP, equipment installed in the local telephone exchange allows the existing phone line to continue to be used, so that a customer who cannot yet get fibre is not simply cut off.
That is a valuable safety net, but it is not a substitute for planning. A line that keeps working for voice may still behave differently for equipment that depends on precise analogue signalling. Alarm communicators, older payment terminals and other specialist devices can be sensitive to the change, and the only reliable way to know is to test them on the new service. Treat SOTAP as a fallback for premises with no better option, not as a reason to leave critical systems untouched.
Why the remaining connections are hard
The connections still on the PSTN are mostly not there through neglect. They are there because they are awkward. A typical example involves several parties: the business that owns the premises, the communications provider that supplies the line, the installer or maintainer of the alarm or terminal, and sometimes a monitoring centre or payment processor. Each has its own processes and lead times. Migrating one line can mean coordinating all of them, possibly replacing or upgrading the device, and testing that it still reaches the right destination reliably.
That is exactly what James Lilley meant by “careful planning, supplier coordination, and thorough testing”. It is also why the last stretch of a migration programme often takes longer than the first: the easy cases go first, and what is left needs more time per line.
The road to 31 January 2027
The timeline below sets out the key points, based on the reporting around Openreach’s letter. Where no precise date was given, the step is described rather than dated.
Awareness is still too low
Openreach’s letter is aimed at the industry, but the people who most need to act are often furthest from the conversation. Telecoms analyst Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight said public awareness remains low. He called for “a much more cohesive campaign that reaches customers directly”, including targeted letters, calls and door–to–door support for those who need extra help.
Age UK has made a similar point from the perspective of older and vulnerable people. Charity director Caroline Abrahams said the switchover is “entering a critical final phase”. While most people have moved over without major problems, she said, providers “must not give up on people who have not responded” and need to keep trying to reach vulnerable customers.
For businesses, the awareness gap shows up differently. The person who receives a provider’s letter about a line may not know what that line is used for. A finance team may see an unfamiliar line on a bill and assume it is redundant; a facilities manager may not know that the alarm panel dials out over copper; a landlord may not realise that the lift phone in a block of flats depends on the PSTN. The result is that critical lines can slip through even in organisations that consider themselves “done”.
Organisations with duties of care deserve particular mention. Housing associations, care providers, sheltered housing operators and landlords may have residents who rely on personal care alarms. Age UK’s warning applies to them as much as to telecoms providers: keep checking, and do not assume silence means everything is fine.
Where the migration risk sits
The chart below is our indicative assessment — not measured data — of how much risk each type of remaining analogue connection carries for a typical UK business if it is not migrated and tested before the deadline. It combines how likely the device is to be affected with how serious the consequences would be.
The pattern matches Openreach’s warning. The highest risk lies with safety and care systems, where a failure may go unnoticed until the moment the device is needed. Payment terminals rank slightly lower because a failure is usually obvious immediately — but an obvious failure at a busy till is still lost revenue. Our coverage of offline card payments and business continuity explores what happens when payment connectivity drops.
A readiness score card for the final stretch
The score card below rates common positions for UK businesses with a little under three months to go. It is a judgement framework for discussion with your IT partner and communications provider, not an audit.
The power backup row is easily overlooked. Traditional copper lines carried their own power from the exchange, so a phone or alarm on a copper line could keep working in a power cut. Digital services rely on equipment at the premises, such as a router, that needs mains power. Where a device must work during an outage — an alarm, a lift phone, a care alarm — check with your provider and installer what backup is in place.
What migration costs, and what delay costs
The figures below are indicative ranges for a smaller UK business with one or two sites and a handful of remaining analogue lines. They are planning estimates rather than quotations, and they vary considerably with the devices involved and the suppliers who maintain them.
| Item | Indicative one–off cost | Indicative ongoing cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audit of remaining analogue lines and what uses them | £300–£1,500 | None | The step that prevents surprises; includes matching bills to devices |
| Fire or intruder alarm communicator upgrade | £150–£600 per panel | Monitoring contract may change | Usually arranged through the alarm installer or maintainer |
| Card terminal replacement or reconfiguration | £0–£300 per terminal | Depends on payment provider | Many providers supply IP or mobile–connected terminals |
| Lift emergency phone or door entry update | £200–£1,000 per unit | £5–£25 per month for a data or mobile connection | Coordinate with the lift or access control contractor |
| Hosted phone system for remaining voice lines | £300–£2,000 to migrate | £8–£20 per user per month | Often cheaper than doubled legacy line rental |
| Battery backup for routers and critical devices | £80–£400 per location | Battery replacement every few years | Keeps alarms and emergency phones working in a power cut |
| Staying on legacy lines until the deadline | None | Double last year’s rental per line | Adds cost without reducing the work still to be done |
The last row is the one Openreach is pointing at. Waiting does not avoid the migration; it only adds cost and pushes the work into a period when engineers and specialist suppliers are most in demand. A failed alarm or a till that cannot take cards in early February would cost far more than doing the work in November.
Early migration versus last–minute migration
Acting now
What Openreach is urging
Leaving it to January
The scenario Openreach warns against
The right–hand column is not hypothetical. Openreach has said explicitly that leaving it until the last minute could make it harder to secure the engineering support required. With no extension available, there is no second chance.
How ready are smaller UK businesses?
The gauge below is our indicative estimate of how prepared a typical smaller UK business with remaining analogue services is for the 31 January 2027 deadline. It is a judgement based on the score card patterns, not a survey figure.
A score of 38 reflects a common situation: the main phones moved years ago, so the business feels finished, but nobody has checked the alarm panel, the lift line or the old terminal in the back office. The gap between “our phones are on VoIP” and “we have no analogue dependencies” is where the risk now lives.
Pull the latest bills from every communications provider and list each line number. Then find the device each one serves — phone, alarm, lift, terminal, modem or nothing at all. Any line you cannot match needs investigating before it is cancelled or migrated, because “unknown” often turns out to mean “the fire alarm”. Share the list with your alarm, lift and payment suppliers and ask each one, in writing, how their equipment will work after the switch–off.
Analysis: the hard part was always going to be last
Openreach’s letter changes nothing about the date, but it changes the tone. “No extensions” is a deliberate signal to providers and businesses that have been waiting to see whether the deadline would slip again. It will not.
The remaining work is also, by its nature, the hardest. The connections still on the PSTN are those with dependencies outside the telecoms provider’s control: alarms maintained by one company, monitored by another and installed years ago; card terminals supplied under contracts nobody has revisited; lift phones in buildings with several owners. Each line needs someone to take responsibility, and in many organisations that someone has not been identified.
The doubled rental on legacy business lines adds a financial nudge. It is also a reminder that the industry’s patience has run out. Combined with the risk that engineering capacity tightens as the deadline approaches, the economics now favour moving early.
There is a resilience angle too. Moving to digital services is an opportunity to improve, not just replace: adding battery backup where it matters, choosing alarm communicators with dual–path signalling over both broadband and mobile, and ensuring that a broadband fault does not silence every critical device at once. Our coverage of Vodafone’s copper switch–off and VMO2’s job cuts and business continuity both point to the same principle: avoid single points of failure in connectivity.
Finally, the social dimension should not be lost. Age UK’s plea that providers “must not give up on people who have not responded” is a reminder that the PSTN carries lifelines as well as business calls. Businesses that manage housing, care or community services have a role in making sure nobody is left with a care alarm that no longer connects.
At a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| What happened | Openreach wrote to communications providers confirming the PSTN switch–off date |
| Deadline | 31 January 2027, with no postponement |
| Time remaining | 89 calendar days and around 60 working days from 4 November 2026 |
| Systems at risk | Point–of–sale terminals, fire and security alarms, personal care alarms |
| Openreach view | Straightforward migrations largely complete; complex connections remain |
| Warning to businesses | Delay risks significant disruption, unnecessary cost and difficulty securing engineers |
| Legacy line charges | Rental doubled compared with the previous year, from earlier in 2026 |
| Without fibre | Customers likely to move to SOTAP, using exchange equipment to keep the existing line working |
| Analyst view | Paolo Pescatore says awareness is low and calls for direct outreach |
| Charity view | Age UK says providers must keep trying to reach vulnerable customers |
| Key action | Audit remaining analogue services and agree a migration plan with your provider |
For related coverage, see our reports on the PSTN switch–off with six months remaining, Vodafone’s copper switch–off, offline payments and business continuity, risks to building automation systems and O2’s AI scam call blocking.
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We audit UK business networks and phone estates, match every line to the device it serves, coordinate with alarm, lift and payment suppliers, and plan migrations with testing built in — well before 31 January 2027.
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