Your phone lines are being switched off. This is what replaces them.
This isn’t a sales pitch dressed up as urgency. Openreach is retiring the copper network that analogue and ISDN phone lines run on, and every business still using one has to move before it happens. If nothing’s changed on your phone system in the last few years, there’s a good chance you’re one of them.
Moving off copper doesn’t have to mean a worse phone system – for most businesses it’s a better one, with numbers that follow people rather than desks, and calls that route themselves out of hours instead of ringing into an empty office. It does mean doing it on your timeline, not a scramble at the deadline.
What is actually happening to your lines
Analogue and ISDN lines – the copper network that’s carried UK phone calls for decades – are being retired by Openreach. In most areas you can no longer order or change a copper line at all, so for plenty of businesses the migration is already under way whether they’ve planned for it or not.
The confirmed cut-off is 31 January 2027, and it isn’t only phones. Anything plugged into an old line – a fire alarm signalling to a monitoring centre, a lift emergency phone, an older card machine – stops working on the same date, often without anyone remembering it’s there until it fails. Our guide to the PSTN switch-off covers what to check and where those forgotten lines tend to hide.
What replaces it is a phone system that runs over your internet connection instead of a dedicated copper pair. For most businesses the day-to-day experience is the same or better: the same numbers, calls that follow whoever’s free, and features a copper line was never going to offer.
Keeping your numbers
This is the first question everyone asks, so it’s worth answering plainly: no, you don’t lose your number. Numbers port across to a digital phone system, including long-standing local ones your customers have used for years.
Porting is an administrative process, not a technical one – your new provider requests the number from your current one, and it moves across in the background. It’s worth starting it early rather than at the last minute, because it’s the step most likely to need chasing if a previous provider drags its feet. We’ll give you a realistic timeline once we know what’s moving.
The one thing porting doesn’t survive is silence. If a line is cut off before the new number is live, calls can fall into the gap between the two. Getting the order in well ahead of any deadline, rather than after, is what avoids that.
Handsets, softphones, or both
Some people need a phone on the desk. Reception, anyone answering a shared line, a warehouse or workshop where a laptop isn’t practical – a physical handset is still the right tool, and a digital one works exactly like the old one did, just plugged into your network instead of a phone socket.
Plenty of other people don’t. A softphone – an app on a laptop or mobile that behaves like a phone – covers anyone who’s mostly at a desk with headphones on, or out of the building more often than in it. The number and the features are identical either way; only the box in front of the person changes.
Most businesses end up with both. Give reception and any shared-line role a real handset, give everyone else a softphone on the laptop or mobile they already carry, and let anyone who wants both have both – running two ways to reach the same number doesn’t cost extra.
Calls that go to the right person
A phone system is only as good as what happens when nobody picks up straight away. Routing decides where a call goes first, hunt groups decide who it tries next if that person’s away from their desk, and an out-of-hours setting decides what happens at six in the evening instead of nine in the morning.
On an old analogue line, that logic barely exists – it rings where it’s plugged in, and if nobody’s there, it just rings out. On a digital system it’s configured once and then it runs itself: a call to the main number hits whoever’s free first, an unanswered call after a set number of rings tries the next person in the group, and anything outside opening hours goes straight to voicemail or an on-call mobile.
None of that needs a receptionist maintaining it by hand. Set it up properly once, and a call at six o’clock behaves exactly as intended, whether or not anyone remembered to think about it that morning.
When half the team is out of the office
A hybrid team isn’t an edge case any more, it’s most businesses on most days – some people in the office, some at home, some between client sites. A phone system built around a building full of desks doesn’t cope with that well. One built to move with people does.
Because the number lives on the platform rather than a desk phone, it rings wherever someone’s logged in – an office handset, a laptop at home, a mobile on the train. A call to the main line finds whoever’s actually free to take it, not just whoever’s sitting nearest a phone that day, and the person calling has no way of telling the difference.
What it needs underneath
A phone system that runs over the internet is only as reliable as the internet underneath it. If the connection drops, the calls drop with it – a different kind of problem to a slow webpage.
For most businesses, good business broadband set up properly is enough – see our business internet page for how we help you choose and buy the right one. Where call volumes are higher, or downtime during a call is genuinely costly, a leased line adds guaranteed upload as well as download – exactly what a call needs when everything else on the connection is busy too. We won’t sell you more connection than the phone system needs.
And if something does go wrong with the connection carrying your calls, our average response time is 15 minutes – a real person working the problem, not a ticket sitting in a queue while your phones are down.
If you live in Teams
If your team already spends the day in Microsoft Teams for chat and meetings, it makes sense to put your phone number there too, rather than running a second app just for calls. Teams Phone turns your existing Teams client into a proper business phone, with the same number, routing and hunt groups described above.
It sits on the same hosted voice platform as everything else on this page – the difference is where the calls surface, not what’s happening underneath. Our Microsoft Teams Phone page covers how that works, and the choice around how the calls themselves get supplied.
Common questions
Will we lose our phone number when we move off ISDN or analogue?
No. Numbers port across to the new system, including numbers you’ve had for years. Porting is handled between providers rather than by you re-registering anything, though it’s worth starting the request early – it’s the step most likely to need chasing if a previous provider is slow to release the number.
How long does the whole move take?
It depends on how many lines and sites you’re moving, and how quickly a previous provider releases your numbers – that tends to set the pace more than the technical setup does. We’ll give you a realistic timeline once we know what’s moving, rather than a generic estimate that doesn’t hold up.
Do we need to buy new handsets for everyone?
Only where a physical handset genuinely earns its place – reception, shared lines, anywhere a laptop isn’t practical. Everyone else can take calls through a softphone app on a device they already have, using the same number and the same features. Most businesses end up doing both rather than picking one for the whole team.
What happens to a call if nobody answers?
That’s decided by routing you set up once, not left to chance. A call can try one person, then a group, then fall to voicemail or an out-of-hours message depending on the time of day – so a call at six in the evening behaves exactly as intended instead of ringing out to nobody.
Does our phone system still work if part of the team is working from home?
Yes – that’s one of the clearer improvements over the old lines. The number lives on the platform, not a desk phone, so it rings wherever someone’s logged in – an office handset, a home laptop, a mobile between meetings – and whoever’s calling can’t tell the difference.
What if our internet connection goes down - do the phones stop working?
They can, because a digital phone system depends on the connection underneath it. That’s why we look at your connection as part of any move, not as an afterthought – properly set-up broadband is enough for most businesses, and where it isn’t, a leased line adds the guaranteed upload that keeps calls holding up under load.
Is moving to Teams Phone the same thing as what's on this page?
It’s the same underlying platform with a different front end. If your team already lives in Microsoft Teams, it can make more sense to answer calls there than in a separate app – our Teams Phone page covers that route specifically, including how the calls themselves get supplied.
We haven't done anything about the switch-off yet - is it too late?
No, but it’s worth starting now rather than waiting for a letter from your current provider. The deadline is fixed and the copper network is already being wound down in most areas, so an audit of what’s plugged into your existing lines – phones, but also alarms, lifts and card machines – is the sensible first step. Our PSTN switch-off guide walks through exactly what to check.
Get your phone system sorted
Nobody chose the deadline, but you can choose how you deal with it – properly, on your terms, before it turns into a scramble.
Call us on 01202 237 273 and we’ll talk through what you’re running now, what has to change before the switch-off, and what a phone system built around how your team actually works would look like.
"*" indicates required fields