BT has put back the deadline for the switch from copper to digital fibre, that stood to affect numerous security and other products and services – intruder alarms, lifts, cashpoint machines and shop payment terminals, besides landline telephones.
The deadline, as featured in the May edition of Professional Security Magazine had been (like the ending of the Redcare line of alarm signalling products) next year; now the telecoms firm is speaking of a single switch for most customers (businesses and consumers) and all customers now expected to have moved off the old analogue PSTN by the end of January 2027.
Howard Watson, Chief Security and Networks Officer, BT Group, said: “The urgency for switching customers onto digital services grows by the day because the 40-year-old analogue landline technology is increasingly fragile. Managing customer migrations from analogue to digital as quickly and smoothly as possible, while making the necessary provisions for those customers with additional needs, including telecare users, is critically important. Our priority remains doing this safely and the work we’re doing with our peers, local authorities, telecare providers and key Government organisations is key. But more needs to be done and we need all local authorities and telecare providers to share with us the phone lines where they know there’s a telecare user.”
BT for some years already has made the switch from the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to digital on a region-by-region basis. The telecoms firm points to telecare alarms – typically for the elderly in their own homes to raise an alert if they collapse – as the reason for the longer deadline. In January BT Consumer formed a Telecare Action Board (TAB), which has brought together around 30 bodies – Government, the telecoms and telecare sectors, industry bodies, councils (whose CCTV control rooms may handle the alarms) and regulators. BT says that only around a quarter of councils and telecare providers have disclosed which phone lines have telecare devices on them. From summer 2024, BT says its consumer arm will ‘ramp-up non-voluntary migrations’ for customers who have not reported themselves as vulnerable, in areas where data sharing agreements have been signed with the council or telecare provider. The firm says new kit will be installed in local telephone exchanges so that consumer and business customers who do not have broadband can use their landline as they are doing until a digital solution becomes available; or 2030, if that comes sooner. Trials have already begun and a nationwide rollout is expected in the autumn. BT Business is urging its business and public sector customers to register their interest to test this temporary ‘pre-digital phone line’ product.
Photo by Mark Rowe; bell box, South Kensington, London.
