The phone switch-off enters its final stretch — and staying put now costs more
Roughly 2.8 million UK lines are still on the old network being switched off by January 2027, with more than half a million serving businesses. The price of waiting is going up.
The clock on the UK's old phone network is now well into its final stretch. The traditional PSTN and ISDN services that have carried business calls for decades are being switched off, with the national target to complete the move by the end of January 2027. Openreach has been clear that this is happening area by area, not all at once on the deadline.
Where things stand
Industry figures reported in early 2026 put roughly 2.8 million lines still on the old network, with more than half a million of those serving business premises. That's a lot of businesses still to move with not much runway left. The work to migrate a line, port numbers cleanly and check everything that depends on the old service takes planning, and the closer it gets to the deadline the busier that gets.
Staying put is no longer the cheap option
There's a shift worth understanding. The 'stop sell' is already in force, so you can't buy new traditional lines or make changes to legacy phone setups. And providers are steadily moving the cost of remaining on old services upward as the network winds down. Where staying put once felt like the do-nothing, save-money choice, it increasingly means paying more for a service with a fixed end date.
It's not just the handsets
The thing that catches businesses out isn't the phones on the desk. It's everything else quietly running over a phone line: alarm panels, lift emergency phones, door entry systems, card machines, and the odd fax or franking line. These need checking and, where needed, moving to an internet-based equivalent before the switch-off reaches you. Leave them and you can find a critical system goes dark on switch-over day.
Moving early is the calm version
Done in good time, the move is straightforward. Calls shift to a cloud phone system over your internet connection, you keep your numbers, and day to day it works much as before, often with better features (one number across desk and mobile, call recording, integrations) at a predictable monthly cost. Done in a last-minute rush, it's a scramble. The choice now is really when and how, not whether.
What this means for your business
If your phones, or anything that runs over a phone line, still sit on the old network, this is the year to plan the move rather than the year to be caught by it. We'll audit what you've got, tell you what moves easily and what needs a different plan, and handle the switch so there's no gap in your phones. No scaremongering, no rush job.
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Ready when you are.
Tell us what's slowing your business down. We'll tell you exactly how we'd fix it — plainly, with no obligation.