16/10/2023
Ready for the IP switchover in 2025
Every UK phone service must switch to IP technology by 2025. Get ahead of the competition with VoIP phone systems that will boost your business both now and in the future.
The UK’s PSTN network will switch off in 2025
What’s happening?
The telecoms industry is moving all its customers from the old analogue public switched telephone network (PSTN) to internet based (fibre) VoIP network. This has been phased in with the use of 04.. numbers when it was introduced 20 years ago to now where Voip numbers can be number type. The plan to have moved everyone over before Openreach stop the PSTN (and ISDN) service in 2025. By then, every phone line in the UK will be VoIP, routing calls over IP (Internet Protocol) rather than the traditional PSTN.
When you say ‘everyone…’?
Yes, we mean everyone. Business and home. It’s not just your phone services you need to think about. It’s everything else that currently uses the old phone network, all your non-voice services connected to PSTN or ISDN lines. Things like alarms, EPOS machines that aren't already, some door entry systems, most CCTV that aren't already, and faxes if not already.
Sounds a bit drastic. Why are you doing it?
PSTN has been the backbone of phone networks for decades. We’ve all seen the dramatic changes in technology over the past few decades, especially recently. It’s all around us: smartphones, apps, the cloud, Zoom and of cause VoIP and so on.
What you probably don’t notice so much is the infrastructure that makes everything work. The telephone lines strung across the streets, the web of copper cables buried beneath your feet, some of which have been down there since the 19th century now being replaced with Fibre.
So IP is better than PSTN?
Potentially. As an essentially 20th century technology, the PSTN network is increasingly out of kilter with the demands of modern communications. As people switch to mobile and internet communications, there are demands much mo