Digital voice and your landline: what actually changes, and the one letter that matters

The short version, in a minute

Direct answer: Your phone moves from the wall socket to the router by 31 January 2027. It costs nothing extra, the number stays, and the one thing to do is open the letter.

This is the biggest change to the UK telephone in forty years and for most households it is also the smallest. One lead moves from the wall to the back of the router, on a day somebody else picks, and nothing else about the phone is different. The difficulty is not technical. It is that several things worth knowing are published in places nobody looks.

This page is about the migration itself and hands the rest to whichever page already owns it. A care alarm, a monitored burglar alarm or a lift phone is in our care alarm guide. Giving up the phone line for good is in our guide to switching without a landline. Doing any of this on somebody else's account is in our elderly parent guide, and broadband for an older household generally is in our pensioners guide.

What is left is this: what changes, what happens if you ignore it, the deadline one provider publishes and the others do not, what becomes of your number, and who pays for a battery. This guide read seven retailers on their own sites on 3 October 2026, and every one of them is quoted rather than summarised.

What actually changes

Direct answer: The socket moves to the router. Every other thing on this page is a consequence of that one sentence.

Openreach puts it in a line: “Instead of plugging your phone into a wall socket, your service will usually connect through your broadband router.” That is the migration. Not a new number, not a new handset in most cases, not a different way of making a call. The phone that has sat in the hall for fifteen years very probably carries on working, plugged in somewhere else.

BT describes the household's part of it: “For most households, it's a simple case of unplugging your phone from its current socket and plugging it into your Smart Hub 2 on Switch Over Day.” If that is the whole of your situation, you can stop reading here with our blessing and come back when the letter arrives.

The two things that are genuinely different

The first is power. The old line carried its own, from the exchange, which is why a landline worked in a power cut without anybody thinking about it. TalkTalk states the new position plainly: “Digital Voice runs over the internet, so if the power goes out, your phone won't work.” That has a section of its own further down, because the remedy varies enormously by provider.

The second is everything else that was plugged into that line. Openreach publishes the list: “Devices connected to your phone line may be affected. This can include alarms, CCTV, payment terminals, telecare devices, health monitoring equipment, door entry systems and lift phones.” Each of those needs checking separately, and that is the job worth doing before any letter arrives rather than after.

The deadline itself is fixed and public. Openreach: “On 31 January 2027, all traditional phone lines will need to move to a digital service.” It moved once already, from the end of 2025, which is why a certain amount of what is written about this subject online is confidently out of date.

What happens if you do nothing

Direct answer: You are not left alone. There are three published outcomes and none of them is that.

This is the question every household actually has and the old version of this page did not answer it. Two bodies do, and between them they cover it completely.

They move you anyway

The Government publishes a checklist for this and has a name for it. “By non-voluntary migrations to digital landlines, we mean migrations where: Any action needs to be taken by the consumer in order for their telephony service to continue functioning in full, and The consumer has not engaged in the process of transition, and The consumer has used the landline in the last 12 months”. That is the definition of a non-voluntary migration, in its own words: you needed to do something, you did not, and you still use the phone.

What follows is the part worth reading twice: “Such users that remain unengaged, despite the exhaustive efforts to contact them listed above, can be migrated on an unsupported basis.” Unsupported means without the engineer visit, the check on your equipment and the help that a household who answered the letter would have had. The same document is careful to add that “Known customers who would normally be in scope for a supported migration will only undergo unsupported non-voluntary migrations as an absolute last resort”, and it lists the contact attempts expected first, which run to letters, emails, texts, phone calls and knocking on the door.

Or the service drops to emergency calls

Openreach publishes the other outcome: “Any customers that are still using services connected over this network after 31 January 2027 may be moved onto an emergency voice-only access service (EVAc), or you may lose your service altogether.” And defines it: “EVAc is a temporary emergency voice-only service for some customers who have not moved to digital before the PSTN switch off. It is designed to keep phone calls working for a limited time, but it may not support many calling features such as caller display, call forwarding or voicemail.”

Read the end of that first sentence rather than the middle. Or you may lose your service altogether. It is the bluntest thing anybody publishes about this subject and it comes from the company that owns the network.

What you need to do

Direct answer: Three questions, and five jobs sorted into the ones with a deadline and the ones that can wait.

The first question does most of the work, because only one of the three answers starts a clock, and it is the first. Everything else can be done calmly, and doing it calmly is a great deal easier than doing it in the week something is scheduled.

The third question changes nothing about what has to happen. It changes what your particular company has published about it, and that is the part a household cannot look up without reading seven different websites, which is what we did.

It runs entirely in your browser. There is no form to submit, nothing sent to any server and nothing stored. One of the three answers is whether somebody in the house depends on the phone, which is not a thing a web page should be collecting, so it collects nothing.

The seven days almost nobody knows about

Direct answer: BT publishes a window for declining the move altogether. It is seven days, and it starts when the letter arrives.

Here it is, on BT's own help page: “If you call us within 7 days of receiving your letter about the move to Digital Voice, we'll be able to get you onto a Broadband-only plan and cancel the move to Digital Voice.”

Three things about that are worth noticing. It is a real, published, specific deadline, which makes it the only one of its kind: no other retailer read for this page publishes any window at all. It is counted from a letter arriving rather than from a date you chose. And it is on a help page rather than on BT's main Digital Voice page, where somebody thinking about this would look first.

Seven days is not long for a household that puts post in a drawer and gets to it on Sunday. It is not a trap and nobody is hiding it, but it is the clearest argument this page can make for opening the envelope the day it lands.

And a reason not to panic about it

Missing the window costs you very little. Digital voice is free, keeps your number, and for most households changes nothing. Letting it happen and then moving to broadband only later is still possible; you are simply cancelling a service rather than declining one, which is a slightly longer conversation.

So the window matters to exactly one household: the one that never uses the phone, would rather not pay for a line at all, and would have said so if anybody had asked at the right moment. That household is the reason this section exists.

How much warning you are entitled to

Direct answer: Sixty days before your own migration, and twelve months before a whole network closes. Both are voluntary commitments rather than rules.

There is a document covering this and almost nobody has heard of it. The Fixed Telecoms Modernisation Charter was first published on 24 March 2026 and last updated on 21 July 2026, and it describes itself in its own first line: “This voluntary charter sets out the principles and expectations how the telecoms industry signatories will ensure, as far as possible, that customers, especially vulnerable customers, are protected during all fixed telecoms modernisations.”

Voluntary, then, and this page is not going to dress that up as a rule. What it does contain is the clearest published answer to how much warning a household should get: “We will always provide our direct customers with at least 60 days' notice before any modernisation, migration or network closure that affects them specifically.”

Sixty days, and the word always. If a letter has given you less than that, you have something specific to point at, and pointing at a signed commitment is a more productive conversation than complaining in general terms.

At network level the notice is longer: “We will publicly announce the switch-off date for any network or service that we own as soon as we are able, but at least 12 months before it begins by informing government who we support publishing this on the gov.uk website.” That is why 31 January 2027 has been public for years rather than sprung on anybody, and it is the reason this page can be written at all.

Who signed it

BT, Sky, Virgin Media O2, VodafoneThree, TalkTalk Consumer, KCOM, Immervox, Utility Warehouse signed as communication providers. Openreach, Virgin Media O2, KCOM, Cityfibre and PlatformX Communications signed separately as network operators and wholesalers.

Between them that is most of the market, which makes the charter worth knowing about, and it is worth repeating that it is a promise rather than a regulation. The enforceable duties sit elsewhere, in Ofcom's General Conditions, and they are narrower than the charter is.

Why your area may already be affected

Direct answer: Stop sell has already reached most of the country. It stops new orders, not your existing line.

If you have tried to change something about your phone or broadband recently and been told the old product is not available, this is why. Openreach: “Stop Sell is triggered when a majority (75%) of premises connected to a particular exchange can get ultrafast Full Fibre.”

The scale of it is larger than most households realise. “By mid-February (Feb14), 'stop sell' rules have been activated in 1281 exchanges across the UK - meaning around 12.5 million premises are under active Stop Sell”. That figure is from February 2026 and it moves every few months, which is why it carries its own date here.

What it does not do

Stop sell bites on a transaction rather than on a line somebody is already using. Openreach is explicit: “Customers in these exchanges not yet able to get Ultrafast Full Fibre at their premises won't be impacted and can stay on their existing copper-based service until Full Fibre does become available.” Nobody is cut off by stop sell. What they lose is the ability to order, move, upgrade or re-grade the old product.

In practice that means one thing for a household: if you are under stop sell and you change anything at all about your service, you come out the other side on a digital product. The switchover you were going to have in 2027 happens the day you decide to take a better deal.

Openreach publishes which exchanges have stopped selling the old products, which is a commercial restriction rather than a switch-off date, and states that it does not publish a complete national forward schedule. So a household cannot look up its own date. Openreach points people at a postcode checker for fibre availability, which answers a different question. The date that actually applies to your house arrives in an envelope.

What the seven retailers publish

Direct answer: Read on their own sites on 3 October 2026. They differ most on the things they say least about.

Read across a row and every one of these companies looks reasonable, because every one of them is. Read down a column and something else appears: seven different answers to the same regulated obligation, and a household's experience of this switchover depends on which letterhead the envelope carries.

The one that publishes nothing

TalkTalk is the one retailer of the seven read for this page that publishes nothing about taking broadband without a phone service, and nothing about declining the move to Digital Voice. Its Digital Voice page has eight questions and none of them is that one. We are not inferring a position from the silence: TalkTalk may well do it readily on the phone. But a household cannot find out by reading, which on this subject is the difference between knowing and ringing.

The one that goes the other way

Sky's approach is the inverse of everybody else's and worth understanding rather than scoring. “These products are not available to customers who are reliant on their landline for emergency services (i.e. do not have a mobile with good signal at home) or who have an emergency care alarm.” Rather than supply a battery or a backup line to households that depend on the phone, Sky declines to sell them the product.

That is defensible and it is also consequential: a household in that position needs a different provider rather than a different plan, and it is better to know that before signing than afterwards. Sky is also the only one of the seven that publishes an actual figure rather than a promise: “All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard.”

What happens to your number

Direct answer: Through the migration it is safe. Give the phone up altogether and it is gone for good.

The official reassurance is unambiguous. Ofcom: “You can keep your phone number - you should continue to make and receive calls in much the same way.” And gov.uk: “Nobody will have to lose their landline service because of this change, as there will still be the option for a 'landline only' service should a customer not wish to purchase a general internet connection.” Both are true, and both are about the migration.

Now the other choice, which is the one the official pages are not describing. BT, in the block headed Broadband without a landline at the foot of its own Digital Voice page: “You'll lose your home phone number and your home phone will no longer work.” And then: “You won't be able to get your home phone number back. You'll have to get a brand new number if you decide you need a home phone in the future.”

Permanent, and stated plainly. The same block adds two more consequences that matter: “You won't be able to make or receive calls, including to emergency services.” And “Personal alarms and any other services which are connected to your home phone will no longer work.” None of that is hidden; it is simply at the foot of the page under a heading that reads like small print, which on this estate is where small print goes and where readers do not.

No regulator or government page read for this guide publishes that a phone number can be lost. The retailers publish it, in their own small print. That asymmetry is not anybody behaving badly. The regulator is describing a migration and the retailer is describing a product, and a household reading only the first will not meet the second until it is irreversible.

The month nobody mentions

If you have already cancelled and had second thoughts, there is a published remedy and it is generous. Ofcom: “If you have already cancelled your previous landline service, you can still ask to keep your phone number for free, as long as you ask within one month of cancelling.” A month, free, just for asking. It is the single most useful sentence on this subject and almost nothing repeats it.

And one case that has nothing to do with the switchover but catches people in the same week. BT: “If your new home is connected to a different exchange, you can't keep your number because the dialling code is different.” Moving house has always worked that way and still does.

Power cuts, and who gets a free battery

Direct answer: The phone stops when the power does. Four retailers give you a battery, one sells it at £149.99.

This is the one genuine loss in the whole switchover, and it is worth stating without drama. The old line drew power from the exchange. The new one draws it from your kitchen. Ofcom: “Digital landlines need mains electricity and will not work in a power cut unless there is a battery back-up.”

There is a duty attached, and its scope is narrower than most people assume. “If you depend on your landline, your provider must make sure you can contact the emergency services during a power cut.” Reaching the emergency services, from the landline. And the offer is conditional: “If you don't have a working mobile phone or a reliable mobile signal, your landline provider must offer you, for free, a back-up solution such as a battery back-up unit for your home.”

A household with a charged mobile and a decent signal is not owed a free battery, because the mobile is the back-up. That is a reasonable rule. It is not the rule most people think they have, and it is the reason the six retailers answer so differently.

Six readings of one condition. BT offers it to customers who need extra support. Vodafone to customers registered as landline dependent. TalkTalk only where there is no mobile signal in the area, which is narrower than having no mobile in the house. Virgin Media supplies a backup line rather than a battery. Sky does not sell the product to such households at all.

And EE publishes the Battery Back Up Plus at £149.99. “A Battery Backup Unit (BBU) provides power to your hub if there's a power cut. This is so you can still make emergency calls from your Digital Voice phone or existing corded handset.” EE's battery back-up product page publishes no free route and no eligibility for a free unit, while BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Vodafone each publish one. BT and EE are the same group.

We are not going to call that a scandal, because a household that qualifies under Ofcom's condition is entitled to ask EE for a free solution regardless of what a product page says. But a household that does not know the condition exists will see a price and either pay it or go without, and that is a worse outcome than the rule intends.

Ofcom also publishes the duration, and the spread is wide enough to be worth asking about by name: “This back-up must last for at least one hour in a power cut, but some providers have back-ups that last up to seven hours.” One hour is the floor and seven is the best published, which is most of an evening apart.

The extensions, the old phone and the fax

Direct answer: The phone upstairs is the one that surprises people, and exactly one organisation publishes why.

Here is the sentence, and it is BT's: “Extension sockets aren't supported on our Digital Voice service.” No regulator, government page or network operator read for this guide publishes that extension sockets stop working. One retailer does. Openreach explains that the phone moves to the router and stops there without drawing the consequence.

Think about what that means in an ordinary house. The phone plugs into the router, and the router is wherever the broadband comes in, which is usually the front room or the hall. Every other socket in the building, and every phone plugged into one, is on wiring that is no longer carrying a service.

The remedy is published too, and it is not expensive: “To keep using your home phones, plug them into the phone port on the back of your Smart Hub, or connect them using a Digital Voice adapter”. A cordless set with extra handsets solves it for most households, and a digital voice adapter solves it where a particular phone has to stay where it is. The point is to know before the day rather than to discover it afterwards.

Whether your handset still works

Usually yes, and BT publishes the two cases where it may not. “Some very old phones may have pulse dialling, which uses clicks, and may not be compatible with Digital Voice.” And the more concrete one: “Phones bought before 2015 may not ring while connected to your Digital Voice Adapter.”

A phone with a dial rather than buttons is the clearest case of the first, and a year is an unusually checkable thing for a provider to publish. If the handset predates 2015 and matters to you, the cheap answer is to test it on the day and replace it if it does not ring, rather than to replace it in advance.

Fax, and the regulator giving up

Ofcom has formally stopped requiring fax to work, which is about as clear an answer as a regulator ever gives. “migration of telephony networks to internet protocol (IP) technology, which means that fax services will no longer work in the same way after the move to IP networks”. And: “We have amended our rules to remove the requirement for BT and KCOM to provide fax services under the USO.”

If a fax matters to the household or the business, plan on a different method rather than on it continuing. gov.uk names it in the same breath as everything else: “If you have other devices connected to your phone line, such as alarm systems, telecare devices or fax machines, you should take steps to ensure they will continue to function correctly following the migration to a digital phone line.”

Everything else on Openreach's list, from alarms to door entry to payment terminals, works the same way: one call each to whoever supplies it, and the call is worth making before the date rather than after.

The day itself, and the afternoon after it

Direct answer: Move the phone to the router, then make a call and answer one. The second half is the half people skip.

BT's description of the whole job is accurate and slightly anticlimactic: “For most households, it's a simple case of unplugging your phone from its current socket and plugging it into your Smart Hub 2 on Switch Over Day.” Vodafone says the same thing from the other end: “Digital Voice or VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) connects your home phone through your router and uses your broadband connection to let you make and receive calls.”

The phone port on a router is usually green and usually labelled, and the cable that was in the wall socket goes into it. That is the migration.

Then test it, both ways

Ring the house from a mobile and let it ring out properly, then ring the mobile from the handset. Both directions, because they can fail independently, and a household that only ever rings out will not discover an incoming problem until somebody important cannot get through.

Then walk round and try any other phone in the house, which is where the extension socket problem shows up. Doing that on the day costs five minutes. Discovering it in six weeks costs a good deal more.

If it does not work

BT publishes a sequence and it is worth following before ringing anybody, because three of the four commonest causes are in the house rather than on the line. First the router: “You should have a steady blue light.”

Then the handset itself, which needs to be switched on, charged and in range of the router if it is cordless. Then the settings, and this one catches people: “Check the ringer volume settings on your handset.” A handset that has just been unplugged, carried across a room and plugged in somewhere else is a handset somebody has pressed buttons on.

And for an older corded phone: “If you're using a corded phone, check that it's using tone dialing.” If there is a switch on the underside marked anything like pulse or tone, tone is the one.

After that it is a job for the provider: “If we can't find a fault or fix the problem online, we'll give you the option to book an engineer appointment.” Log it with a date and a reference, because that is what starts the compensation clock described further down.

What it costs

Direct answer: Nothing, according to every retailer that addresses it. The clause after the comma is where to look.

BT: “Switching to Digital Voice won't cost you anything. And you won't pay more than your current home phone plan, unless you've chosen to upgrade to Digital Voice while recontracting your home broadband plan.” Virgin Media: “Your new fibre phone line will cost the same as your current home phone service - you won't be charged anything extra.” EE: “The cost of the new Digital Home Phone and broadband service is all included in your single package price. There's no extra charge for Digital Home Phone.” Vodafone: “If you buy a broadband plan with us, you can choose to include landline at no extra cost as part of your package.” Four companies, four ways of saying the same thing, and no reason to doubt any of them.

Now read the end of BT's sentence again, because it is the honest part: unless you have chosen to upgrade while recontracting your broadband. That is where a price change actually arrives on this subject. Not from the migration, which is free, but from the new contract that is often offered in the same conversation.

That is not a criticism of anybody. A provider ringing a customer about a mandatory change will naturally mention its current deals, and the deal may genuinely be better. The advice is simply to take the two decisions separately: accept the migration on its own terms first, then compare what is available, rather than letting a technical change sell a two year contract.

Sky is the only one of the seven that publishes a figure rather than a reassurance: “All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard.” Zero pounds a month is a price, and it can be checked, which is more than the others offer.

No retailer read for this guide publishes the same broadband package priced both with and without the phone service, so there is no published figure for what the voice service is worth. So there is no honest way to tell you what the voice service is worth, and this page is not going to estimate it. What you can do is check what the same provider charges for broadband alone at your address, which is the comparison the postcode tool below actually makes.

Your provider, in its own words

Direct answer: Seven short answers, so you can read the one that applies to you and skip the other six.

Everything above is the shape of the thing. This is the detail for one household, and the only reason it is useful is that nobody can reasonably be expected to read seven company websites to find out what their own switchover involves. All of it was read on 3 October 2026 and none of these pages carries a date of its own.

BT

BT calls it Digital Voice and defines it cleanly: “Digital Voice is your home phone service delivered through your broadband connection instead of the old analogue network.” Cost: “Switching to Digital Voice won't cost you anything. And you won't pay more than your current home phone plan, unless you've chosen to upgrade to Digital Voice while recontracting your home broadband plan.” Number: unchanged. Power cut: “If there is a power outage or your broadband fails, you'll be unable to make calls using Digital Voice, including calls to 999.” A battery is offered to “Customers who need extra support may be offered a backup unit so they can still make essential calls for a short time during an outage.”

BT is the only one of the seven with a published deadline for declining: “If you call us within 7 days of receiving your letter about the move to Digital Voice, we'll be able to get you onto a Broadband-only plan and cancel the move to Digital Voice.” It is also the only one that publishes the extension socket problem, and the only one that spells out what going broadband-only does to your number. More published detail than anybody else, in more places than anybody would look.

Sky

Sky calls them internet calls: “For full fibre and some part fibre broadband products, Sky Talk is provided as internet calls as standard.” Cost is the clearest of the seven because it is a figure rather than a promise: “All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard.” Number: “in most cases” kept.

And then the sentence that makes Sky different from everybody else: “These products are not available to customers who are reliant on their landline for emergency services (i.e. do not have a mobile with good signal at home) or who have an emergency care alarm.” There is no battery offer because there is no sale. If somebody in the house depends on the phone or there is a care alarm, Sky's full fibre products are not for that household, and knowing that before signing is worth a great deal more than a free battery.

Virgin Media

Virgin Media runs its own network rather than Openreach's, so its timetable is its own. Number: “No, your number will stay the same. A few customers might need to change their number or services with us - but this is very rare, and we'll let you know if it's the case.” It is the only one of the seven that admits the number can change at all, which reads as candour rather than a warning.

Cost: “Your new fibre phone line will cost the same as your current home phone service - you won't be charged anything extra.” Power cut: “We'll give people who rely on a landline or don't have a mobile, an emergency backup line so they can contact the emergency services, friends or family for free.” That is a backup line rather than a battery, a different mechanism from everybody else's.

Declining is blunter here than anywhere else: “You'll need to cancel your landline services, which might increase the cost of your bundle, or disconnect all your services with us”. And then the only published fee waiver of the seven: “we'll waive any applicable early disconnection fee if you'd like to do this”. If you are leaving Virgin Media over this, that sentence is worth having open on the phone.

TalkTalk

TalkTalk is the shortest entry here because its page is the shortest. Power cut: “Digital Voice runs over the internet, so if the power goes out, your phone won't work.” That is the plainest sentence any of the seven publishes on the subject. The battery offer is the narrowest: “If you're in an area with no mobile signal, we'll offer a battery backup to keep your Wi-Fi going for up to an hour.”

TalkTalk is the one retailer of the seven read for this page that publishes nothing about taking broadband without a phone service, and nothing about declining the move to Digital Voice. Nor does it publish whether your number is kept. That is not evidence of a bad answer; it is an absence of a published one, and the only way to find out is to ring and ask.

Vodafone

Vodafone defines it well: “Digital Voice or VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) connects your home phone through your router and uses your broadband connection to let you make and receive calls.” Declining is framed as an ordinary choice rather than an exception, which is the friendliest treatment of the seven: “If you choose one of our broadband plans, you can decide whether to include landline or not at no extra cost.” Cost: “If you buy a broadband plan with us, you can choose to include landline at no extra cost as part of your package.”

Power cut, from its support article: “Your telephone connects to your router for Digital Voice, so if the router loses power, you won't be able to use your landline until it comes back on.” Which is correct, and sits on the same website as a sentence saying the opposite. If you are with Vodafone, trust the support article and not the landline page.

EE

EE calls it Digital Home Phone. Number: “Your home phone number won't change.” Cost: “The cost of the new Digital Home Phone and broadband service is all included in your single package price. There's no extra charge for Digital Home Phone.” Declining: “No, if you no longer need a home phone, you can move to EE's broadband only plan. This could reduce your monthly cost.” EE is the only one of the seven to suggest declining might save money.

The power cut answer is where EE parts company with the rest. The unit does what the others do: “A Battery Backup Unit (BBU) provides power to your hub if there's a power cut. This is so you can still make emergency calls from your Digital Voice phone or existing corded handset.” It is listed at £149.99. EE's battery back-up product page publishes no free route and no eligibility for a free unit, while BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Vodafone each publish one. An EE household that would qualify under Ofcom's condition should ask rather than buy, because the condition does not stop applying because a product page has a price on it.

Plusnet

Plusnet publishes no Digital Voice page of its own and routes its customers to EE. What it does have is the most explicit opt-out structure of the seven: the page asks whether you use your landline and then splits in two. “Get the connection you need and nothing you don't with our broadband only packages. No phone line, no extras. Just broadband.”

Number: “And in most cases, you'll be able to keep your current home phone number.” In most cases, where BT and EE say it flatly. Worth noting the hedge rather than assuming the three companies mean different things by it, because Plusnet broadband now runs on EE's network and the underlying answer is probably the same.

Switching provider while all this is happening

Direct answer: It is a reasonable moment to look, as long as you keep the two decisions apart.

A switchover conversation is very often also a sales conversation, and there is nothing wrong with that: the deal may be better and you were going to be contacted anyway. The trap is letting a technical change you did not choose decide a contract you did not plan.

So take them in order. First settle the migration on its own terms, which cost nothing and change nothing. Then, separately and without a deadline hanging over it, look at what is actually available at your address. The two things arriving in one phone call does not make them one decision.

Your number comes with you

Ofcom's rule is the one most people half know: “You can keep your phone number - you should continue to make and receive calls in much the same way.” That covers the migration, and separately you can take the number to a new provider when you switch. Ask for it when you sign up rather than afterwards, because that is when the new provider sets it in motion.

And the safety net if you have already cancelled: “If you have already cancelled your previous landline service, you can still ask to keep your phone number for free, as long as you ask within one month of cancelling.” A month is long enough to change your mind twice.

One thing to check before you split a bundle

Ofcom publishes a warning that applies squarely here: moving a landline number away while leaving the broadband where it is can affect the broadband service tied to it. Ask the question before you start rather than after, because unpicking it afterwards is a good deal harder than asking.

Stop sell makes this sharper than it used to be. If your exchange is one of the 1,281 already under stop sell, then changing anything means coming out on a digital product, which is fine and is also the switchover happening on your timetable rather than theirs. For most households that is an argument for doing it deliberately rather than waiting.

If it goes wrong

Direct answer: Six weeks to a free adjudicator, not eight. And compensation that runs whether you ask or not.

Ofcom publishes no complaint route specific to the migration. The route is the ordinary one for any telecoms problem. That sounds like a gap and it is the opposite of one: it means a household does not have to find a special process at the worst possible moment. The ordinary route works and it is well worn.

Step one, and Ofcom is blunt about the order: “Contact your provider first. Explain what has happened and ask them to fix the problem.” In writing, and keep the date, because the date you first complained is what everything downstream is measured from.

The money that arrives without asking

Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme applies here and most households do not know it exists. “This scheme covers all residential fixed broadband and landline products.” £10.34 for each calendar day a service is unfixed after two full working days from reporting it. £32.31 for an engineer who does not turn up, or an appointment cancelled with less than a day's notice. £6.46 for each day a new service starts late.

Those three figures were published on 20 July 2026 and read on 3 October 2026. Ofcom gives no effective-from date against them and says “Compensation amounts increase each year in line with inflation.” So treat them as current rather than fixed and check the page if you are relying on a number.

One exclusion is worth knowing on this particular page: Ofcom lists “If the loss in service is caused by equipment or activity within your home” among the cases where compensation does not apply. A phone that stopped because an extension socket is no longer served could fall on the wrong side of that line. Ofcom does not address the interaction anywhere we could find, so we are not going to tell you which way it falls.

The number that changed

If the provider will not put it right, an independent adjudicator will look at it and it costs nothing. Ofcom: “You can take your complaint to an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme if the issue is not resolved within six weeks, or if you receive a deadlock letter.”

Six weeks. Ofcom cut it from eight on 8 April 2026, and the guide this page replaces said eight in fourteen separate places, including in a heading. A complaint first raised before that date is still on the old clock, so the date you complained matters as much as the fact that you did.

And this is not theoretical. Ofcom has already enforced on a migration that went wrong: “Ofcom has today fined Virgin Media £23.8 million, after it disconnected telecare customers during its programme to migrate customers to digital landlines.” A household naming that case is not being dramatic; it is pointing at a decided one.

What we could not find out

Direct answer: Four things a household would reasonably want to know that nobody publishes.

Filling these with a confident sentence would be easy and this page does not do it.

What the phone service is actually worth

No retailer read for this guide publishes the same broadband package priced both with and without the phone service, so there is no published figure for what the voice service is worth. Five of the seven say it costs nothing extra, which is a claim about your bill rather than a price, and none of them can be checked against a with and without comparison on their own site.

Whether you can refuse the migration itself

No primary source read for this guide publishes a right to refuse. What exists is the right to decline the phone SERVICE, which five retailers publish, and one telecare-specific pause that Ofcom publishes. Nobody states that a household can simply stay on the old network, and the network is being switched off either way.

What happens to an extension socket, officially

No regulator, government page or network operator read for this guide publishes that extension sockets stop working. One retailer does. One retailer publishes it clearly and the rest of the industry is silent, which for the most common practical consequence of the whole programme is a strange place for the information to live.

When a particular street gets switched

Openreach publishes which exchanges have stopped selling the old products, which is a commercial restriction rather than a switch-off date, and states that it does not publish a complete national forward schedule. So there is no way for a household to look up its own date; it arrives in a letter, which is the reason this page keeps going on about letters.

Broadband at their postcode

Direct answer: Check the exact address rather than the postcode, and check it before anybody rings anybody.

This is the part of the job that is entirely yours and needs nobody’s permission. Two or three options with the monthly price, the minimum term and what happens to the phone written next to each, and then a four minute phone call that your parent makes.

What this page used to say, and why it changed

Direct answer: Nine corrections. Two are factual errors that were live on this page, and the rest are the reason it was rebuilt rather than edited.

The first two matter most, because a reader could have acted on them: this page said to wait eight weeks before going to an adjudicator when the answer has been six since 8 April 2026, and it described the rule backwards into the bargain. Publishing that here rather than quietly fixing it is the only way somebody who acted on the old version can tell whether they acted on something wrong.

In short

1. The old phone network is switched off on 31 January 2027.
2. Openreach: “On 31 January 2027, all traditional phone lines will need to move to a digital service.”
3. What changes: “Instead of plugging your phone into a wall socket, your service will usually connect through your broadband router.”
4. For most households that is a one minute job, it costs nothing extra and the number stays.
5. BT: “For most households, it's a simple case of unplugging your phone from its current socket and plugging it into your Smart Hub 2 on Switch Over Day.”
6. If you do nothing, you are not left alone.
7. Openreach: “Any customers that are still using services connected over this network after 31 January 2027 may be moved onto an emergency voice-only access service (EVAc), or you may lose your service altogether.”
8. The Government publishes a checklist for moving people who never replied.
9. It calls them non-voluntary migrations: “Such users that remain unengaged, despite the exhaustive efforts to contact them listed above, can be migrated on an unsupported basis.”
10. And the reassuring half: “Known customers who would normally be in scope for a supported migration will only undergo unsupported non-voluntary migrations as an absolute last resort”
11. Two official bodies disagree about whether to act now.
12. gov.uk, last updated 28 February 2024: “Communications providers will contact their customers ahead of the migration taking place, so you do not need to take any action until your provider contacts you directly.”
13. Openreach, current: “Act now to get everything set up before the deadline.”
14. BT publishes a deadline for changing your mind, and nobody else publishes one at all.
15. “If you call us within 7 days of receiving your letter about the move to Digital Voice, we'll be able to get you onto a Broadband-only plan and cancel the move to Digital Voice.”
16. Seven days, counted from a letter, and not repeated on BT's main Digital Voice page.
17. Through the migration your number is safe. Ofcom: “You can keep your phone number - you should continue to make and receive calls in much the same way.”
18. Give the phone up entirely and it is not. BT: “You won't be able to get your home phone number back. You'll have to get a brand new number if you decide you need a home phone in the future.”
19. That sits in the legal block at the foot of BT's page, not in the FAQ.
20. gov.uk says the opposite about the migration: “Nobody will have to lose their landline service because of this change, as there will still be the option for a 'landline only' service should a customer not wish to purchase a general internet connection.”
21. Both are true, about different choices. No regulator or government page read for this guide publishes that a phone number can be lost. The retailers publish it, in their own small print.
22. If you cancel and regret it, Ofcom: “If you have already cancelled your previous landline service, you can still ask to keep your phone number for free, as long as you ask within one month of cancelling.”
23. In a power cut the phone stops. TalkTalk: “Digital Voice runs over the internet, so if the power goes out, your phone won't work.”
24. Ofcom's condition: “If you don't have a working mobile phone or a reliable mobile signal, your landline provider must offer you, for free, a back-up solution such as a battery back-up unit for your home.”
25. And the duration: “This back-up must last for at least one hour in a power cut, but some providers have back-ups that last up to seven hours.”
26. Four retailers publish a free battery and each defines who qualifies differently.
27. BT: customers who need extra support. Vodafone: registered landline dependent.
28. TalkTalk: only where there is no mobile signal. Virgin Media: a backup line, not a battery.
29. EE sells it at £149.99. EE's battery back-up product page publishes no free route and no eligibility for a free unit, while BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Vodafone each publish one.
30. Sky takes the opposite approach: “These products are not available to customers who are reliant on their landline for emergency services (i.e. do not have a mobile with good signal at home) or who have an emergency care alarm.”
31. Extension sockets are the practical shock, and one retailer alone publishes it.
32. BT: “Extension sockets aren't supported on our Digital Voice service.”
33. The remedy: “To keep using your home phones, plug them into the phone port on the back of your Smart Hub, or connect them using a Digital Voice adapter”.
34. No regulator, government page or network operator read for this guide publishes that extension sockets stop working. One retailer does.
35. Old handsets: “Some very old phones may have pulse dialling, which uses clicks, and may not be compatible with Digital Voice.”
36. And: “Phones bought before 2015 may not ring while connected to your Digital Voice Adapter.”
37. Fax: Ofcom has effectively given up on it. “We have amended our rules to remove the requirement for BT and KCOM to provide fax services under the USO.”
38. What else runs on the line, in Openreach's own list: “Devices connected to your phone line may be affected. This can include alarms, CCTV, payment terminals, telecare devices, health monitoring equipment, door entry systems and lift phones.”
39. Cost: every retailer that addresses it says the migration adds nothing.
40. BT: “Switching to Digital Voice won't cost you anything. And you won't pay more than your current home phone plan, unless you've chosen to upgrade to Digital Voice while recontracting your home broadband plan.” Read the clause after the comma.
41. Sky is the only one publishing a figure: “All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard.”
42. No retailer read for this guide publishes the same broadband package priced both with and without the phone service, so there is no published figure for what the voice service is worth.
43. If it goes wrong, the route is the ordinary one. Ofcom publishes no complaint route specific to the migration. The route is the ordinary one for any telecoms problem.
44. Ofcom: “Contact your provider first. Explain what has happened and ask them to fix the problem.”
45. Automatic compensation covers it: “This scheme covers all residential fixed broadband and landline products.”
46. £10.34 a day for an unfixed fault after two full working days.
47. £32.31 for a missed engineer appointment.
48. £6.46 a day where a new service starts late.
49. Those were published on 20 July 2026 and read on 3 October 2026. “Compensation amounts increase each year in line with inflation.”
50. Then an adjudicator, free: “You can take your complaint to an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme if the issue is not resolved within six weeks, or if you receive a deadlock letter.”
51. Six weeks, not eight. Ofcom cut it on 8 April 2026.
52. Ofcom fined one provider over a migration already: “Ofcom has today fined Virgin Media £23.8 million, after it disconnected telecare customers during its programme to migrate customers to digital landlines.”
53. This guide read seven retailers on their own sites, on 3 October 2026.
54. Of the seven retailers read for this page, none publishes a date on its digital voice pages. Openreach publishes none on its consumer pages either. Only the Ofcom and gov.uk pages carry one.
55. TalkTalk is the one retailer of the seven read for this page that publishes nothing about taking broadband without a phone service, and nothing about declining the move to Digital Voice.
56. One retailer contradicts itself on its own site about power cuts.
57. Vodafone's support article: “Your telephone connects to your router for Digital Voice, so if the router loses power, you won't be able to use your landline until it comes back on.”
58. Vodafone's broadband page: “Landlines are useful in emergencies. If you have a power outage, your landline will usually still work - this can be helpful if you don't have good phone reception, or your phone has run out of battery.”
59. That was true of the old line and is not true of the product on that page.
60. The one job worth doing before any letter arrives is checking what else is on the line.
61. Everything else can wait for the letter, and then should not wait at all.

Each line stands on its own and carries its date. Reviewed by a person at least quarterly, last on 3 October 2026.