I know that many constituents are concerned about BT’s approach to moving all of their customers from old, analogue landlines onto digital landlines. This is an issue I have written to BT about on a number of occasions over recent months.

I have now received this update on their switchover:

Following our commitment to a new industry charter, agreed with the Government in December, the current pause on non-voluntary moves to digital landlines has impacted the timing of the overall programme.  However, the 40-year-old PSTN is increasingly fragile as it is at the end of its serviceable life – this means we still need to work at pace to ensure we can continue to provide reliable landline services into the future for everyone.  As a result, we are extending the deadline to close the PSTN, with all customers now expected to have moved off old analogue services by the end of January 2027.

Our overriding priority is customer safety and supporting those with additional needs, such as telecare users.  Whilst the switch has and will be straightforward for the vast majority of customers, we know that some are particularly concerned about the impact it will have. So we have also introduced a series of improvements to further protect and reassure customers:  

• For BT customers that don’t or can’t yet access broadband at home alongside their voice services, we are introducing a new dedicated landline service for them.  This won’t require any in-home changes at all and it will continue to provide a powered line.  This isn’t available for broadband customers, as the technology we’re deploying cannot support it on the same line.  It’s an interim solution until 2030 at the latest.  We will start making this available from October this year.

• Unless they elect to move, we won’t switch vulnerable customers until spring 2025 at the earliest.  And we will only move telecare users when we can check that their device continues to function after the switch – we expect to be able to do this early next year. We’ve started to move non-vulnerable customers who don’t use their landline at all and we expect to start scaling up migrations later in the summer.  Where full fibre is available, we will move them to this future-proofed network and all customers will receive extensive information about the change well in advance of their switchover day.

• We will continue to provide free, additional support for vulnerable customers and those who don’t have a mobile phone or live in areas with no coverage (and so cannot rely on their mobile in the event of a power cut).  This includes free engineer in-home installations, a free ‘hybrid’ phone (which automatically switches over to the mobile network should the fixed connection go down) and/or a free battery back-up unit to keep equipment running during a power cut.  We will soon be making available an even better battery back-up unit to give greater peace of mind to customers that they will be able to make emergency calls during a power outage. 

• We will intensify our customer awareness and information campaign.  We’ll build on our regional engagement programme – where we run hundreds of face-to-face events, meet thousands of customers and run local media campaigns – committing to visit every part of the UK at least once more.  Our Digital Voice Advisory Group, composed of charities and customer representative organisations, will continue to act as a critical sounding board for our approach and we continue to build new charity partnerships across the country to help with awareness raising.  And we’ve co-founded a new Telecare Action Board, with the telecare sector, local authorities and Government, to ensure we’re protecting telecare users – and where we also want, with other providers and with Government support, to launch a dedicated, national telecare awareness campaign.

I hope this provides you with reassurance that we’re taking the right steps to fully inform and protect BT customers throughout this important programme.