There’s now just twelve-months until the UK reaches the first major ‘Stop Sell’ – after which new analogue telephone line services will no longer be available to purchase.
The clock is also ticking for businesses with analogue services still in use: by 2025, all telecoms services in the UK that rely on traditional analogue (PSTN) copper phones lines will be declared ‘End-of-Life’ and will be officially ceased.
Analogue phone lines
ADSL & FTTC (‘superfast’) broadband connections
ISDN phone lines
Other – e.g: analogue fax & alarms lines
What should your organisation do to prepare for the big switch-off? First, check out our handy guide, but to summarise, businesses have a few options:
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Move to a cloud-hosted system
Most businesses (and homes) will likely choose to migrate their phone system to a similar setup that is cloud hosted, in future relying on VOIP technology to route calls over their internet connection instead, and taking their old analogue number(s) with them. This is also the option most of the UK’s major telecoms companies will be pushing as major improvements to UK broadband infrastructure are rolled-out.
Your new phone system could be a dedicated hosted telecoms platform, or even telephony functionality enabled in another communications platform, such as via Microsoft Teams.
Upgrade to SIP
For many of those already committed to a traditional onsite PBX, moving to a SIP service is also a viable alternative – replacing outdated ISDN lines with digitally-registered SIP channels for cost effectiveness.
This a better option for those operating at large scale, or with extremely specialised telecoms hardware functions that don’t have cloud-based alternatives available.
Go Fully-Mobile
If your organisation is heavily distributed to the extent that it has no centralised inbound call handling, there’s always the option of moving entirely to mobiles – although numbering challenges mean this won’t suit everyone.
Alternatively, you can combine this with Option #1, and deploy work soft phones to staff mobiles for a super-flexible work phone system without all the extra plastic.
For communications support and expertise, please contact our team today.