The PSTN Switch-Off Countdown: A Household Action Plan for the Final Year

For most households the switch to a digital landline is undramatic: the phone plugs into the router instead of the wall, the number stays the same, and life carries on. The point of this page is to make sure yours is one of those households, by walking through the last five months one at a time, and by setting out, from the government's own documents, what the process looks like for a home that does not engage.

Is the 31 January 2027 deadline really fixed?

Direct answer: yes. The government's connectivity timeline states that all users of the Openreach public switched telephone network need to be migrated to new services by 31 January 2027, and Openreach's Director of All-IP said on 30 July 2026 that the switch-off is six months away and there is no extension to the deadline.

It is worth being clear about why people doubt it. The deadline was originally the end of December 2025 and was pushed back to January 2027 to give telecare providers, councils and households more time. That single delay has left a lot of people assuming it will slip again. Everything published since points the other way. Openreach has raised the wholesale price of the old line twice this year to push the last customers across, and the government published a suite of documents in March 2026 setting out how providers should handle the final stages, including customers who do not respond. Those are the actions of an industry planning to finish, not to extend.

How many homes still have not switched?

Direct answer: Openreach said on 30 July 2026 that around 1.5 million lines were still on the old copper phone network, including roughly 350,000 business premises, which leaves something over a million homes. The number is falling quickly.

The trajectory matters as much as the figure. ISPreview reported roughly 2.8 million lines outstanding in February 2026, Openreach put it at around 2.5 million in April, then 1.9 million in June and 1.5 million at the end of July. That is most of the country moved, at a rate ISPreview estimated in April at around 44,000 lines a week. It also means the households still to move are, by definition, the ones providers have found hardest to reach. If that is you, the process below is what you can expect.

What actually happens if you do nothing?

Direct answer: a defined process, published by the government in March 2026, that your provider has to follow before it can move or cease your service. It starts with three contact attempts and ends, for a line still on the old network after the deadline, with a basic voice fallback that does not carry broadband.

Two documents govern this. The non-voluntary migration checklist covers customers who have not engaged but can be moved without needing to do anything at their end. The Final Engagement Protocol covers customers who cannot be moved that way and have not responded, and it is explicit that in those circumstances providers will need to cease their services. Both are voluntary industry commitments made under a government charter, and both are written in the first person by the providers themselves.

Then there is what happens to a line that is simply still there on 1 February. Openreach has been clear there will not be a big bang. Its plan, set out in a briefing to providers in April 2026 and piloted in the Salisbury and Mildenhall exchange areas from 3 August, is a product called Emergency Voice Access, described in Openreach's own words as a less feature-rich service with fewer calling and network features. The same briefing states that broadband supplied over the old line will be ceased as part of the move. It is a stopgap to keep a basic phone working while the last customers are moved to a proper digital service. It is not a landline you would choose, and it is not one you can keep.

What should you do in September and October?

Direct answer: find out where you stand, and audit the house. Neither takes more than an evening, and together they remove most of the risk.

Start with a single question to your provider: has my line already moved to digital, and if not, when is it planned? A surprising number of people have already been switched and have not noticed, because the change can be made without anything happening at your end. If it has not happened, ask for the planned date in writing, and ask what you will need to do on the day. Then tell them two things they need to know: whether anyone in the home uses a telecare or personal alarm, and whether you have a mobile phone that works at home. Both change the support you are entitled to.

Then walk the house. Follow every phone cable from the wall and list what it feeds. The usual suspects are a second handset in a bedroom, a burglar alarm panel that dials out, a care alarm base unit, an old fax, and in some flats a lift or door entry line. Openreach's own list for businesses is payment terminals, lift alarms and security systems, and the household version is shorter but the principle is the same: anything on the list needs its supplier to confirm it works on a digital line. If your line rental is about to go up in October, that is also the month to stop paying for a service that is being withdrawn.

What should you do in November and December?

Direct answer: confirm the date, sort the sockets, and arrange your power cut backup, so that the switch itself is boring.

By now you should have a migration date. If you do not, chase it, because engineering capacity gets tighter as the deadline approaches and Openreach has warned that waiting makes it harder to secure support. Decide where the phone will live. After the switch it plugs into the router or an adapter rather than the wall, so if the router is in the hall and the phone has always been in the kitchen, you need either an adapter or a new plan. Ask now. If you are told you need a new router, ask when it will arrive and whether the old one stays working until the switch.

Then think about power cuts, honestly. A digital landline needs the router to be powered. If you have a mobile that works at home, that is your backup and you are done. If you do not, or if anyone in the home depends on the landline, your provider must offer a solution, and for customers who depend on their landline it must be free. Ask for it in writing and make sure it arrives before the switch, not after. Our guide to digital voice in a power cut goes into the options in detail, and you should also be on your provider's Priority Services Register if you qualify.

What should you do in January 2027?

Direct answer: if you have switched, test it. If you have not, act on the notice you will have received, and if you have not received one, that is the phone call to make this week.

If your line has moved, make a call and receive a call, check the number is unchanged, check every handset you rely on, and if you have a battery back-up unit, check its light is green. If anything on the list from October has stopped working, contact its supplier and your provider the same day, because the government's checklist commits providers to restore the phone of a vulnerable customer as a priority if it stops working after a migration.

If your line has not moved and you have had a final notice, respond to it. The protocol is explicit that responding opens a conversation about migration, delay or extra safeguards, and that only silence leads to cessation. If you have had nothing at all, do not assume that means you are fine. Ring your provider, confirm which service you are on, and ask what happens to your line on 1 February. A household that reaches the end of January without having had that conversation is exactly the household the fallback service was built for, and you do not want to be it.

Which sockets and phones will stop working?

Direct answer: your handset almost certainly keeps working, but where it plugs in changes. The phone service now comes from the router rather than the wall, so a socket in another room will not carry it unless your provider gives you an adapter.

ISPreview's description of the typical switch is accurate for most homes: a change of service managed by your provider, which often results in you needing to connect your home phone into the back of either a broadband router or a small analogue terminal adapter, instead of directly into the socket on the wall. BT's help pages say a corded phone plugs into the green port on the back of its Smart Hub, and describe a Digital Voice Adapter that lets you place a handset wherever suits you best. Other providers offer equivalents. The point is to ask before the switch, not after, and to say plainly which rooms you use a phone in.

One thing genuinely changes. A corded phone plugged into a router with battery backup keeps working in a power cut. A cordless phone does not, because its base needs mains power, and BT's own guidance recommends keeping a corded phone as a backup or using a mobile. If you have relied on a cordless phone for years and never thought about it, this is the moment to find the old corded one in the drawer.

What else in your home uses the phone line?

Direct answer: anything with a phone cable running to it, and the only reliable way to know is to look. Alarms that dial out are the common one in a house. Care alarms and pendants are the important one, and they get their own guide.

A burglar alarm with a phone dialler was standard for years and many are still fitted. It will need either a digital-compatible communicator or a mobile-based one, and that is a job for the alarm company, not your phone provider. Some older meters, some door entry systems in flats and any lift line in a building you manage sit in the same category. Openreach's warning to businesses about payment terminals, lift alarms and security systems applies in miniature to a home.

If anyone in your home uses a telecare or personal alarm, the government's checklist commits providers to ask you explicitly about it and to identify telecare users through data-sharing with councils, and the Final Engagement Protocol gives telecare users the longest notice period and requires providers to alert the telecare provider before ceasing a line. Our stop-sell explainer has a section on care alarms now, and a full guide for families and carers follows this one.

What has your provider promised you?

Direct answer: quite a lot, in writing, under a government charter. The March 2026 checklist is written in the providers' own voice and sets out what they will do before moving anyone who has not engaged.

Two more commitments are worth knowing. Providers say they will start non-voluntary migrations with the customers least likely to come to harm, meaning infrequent landline users with no vulnerability flags, before moving anyone else that way. And where a customer's phone stops working after a migration and there is no alternative, the checklist says restoration can include reinstating the old service temporarily. That is a safety net, not a plan, but it exists.

What does each provider offer for power cuts?

Direct answer: Ofcom requires every provider to have at least one solution giving a minimum of one hour of access to emergency services in a power cut, free of charge to customers who depend on their landline. What that solution looks like varies by provider, and two of the largest publish theirs clearly.

The Ofcom rule comes from General Condition A3, which requires providers to take all necessary measures to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency organisations, and from Ofcom's 2018 guidance that providers should have at least one solution enabling that access for a minimum of one hour in a power outage. Ofcom's own page on the migration adds that where consumers need it to call emergency services, it must be provided free of charge. If a provider tells you a backup costs money and you depend on the landline, quote that.

Do you need fibre to switch?

Direct answer: no. Only the old analogue phone service is being switched off. Copper lines still exist and can carry a digital phone service and broadband, and a household without broadband may be offered an interim exchange-based phone line by some providers.

This catches a lot of people out, and ISPreview makes the point plainly: only the PSTN phone service is being removed, copper lines still exist and can also handle digital voice and broadband, so this is not simply the switch to full fibre. The copper product that carries a digital line without the old phone service is called SOGEA, and our SOGEA explainer covers it. Openreach has been offering providers free or discounted connection for moving customers to it. If your provider has offered you full fibre, that is a separate and usually welcome upgrade, but it is not a condition of keeping a phone.

Your number moves with you. Our guide to what happens to your number covers the detail, and the short version is that migration keeps it and cancellation is the only thing that risks it.

Who do you call?

Direct answer: your own provider first, using the number on your bill, because every safeguard in the process runs through them. Then, if you want the official picture, the government's collection of switch-off guidance on GOV.UK.

The GOV.UK collection titled Telecommunications Modernisation holds the connectivity timeline, the charters, the checklist and the protocol, and points readers to the industry site digitalphoneswitchover.com. Ofcom's consumer pages set out the protections around emergency access. Many councils now have a digital team or digital champions who will help an older resident through the process, and it is worth asking. If you are not sure whether you count as vulnerable for these purposes, the government published a definition in November 2024, and a telecare user, a person with no mobile signal at home, or someone who depends on the landline for health reasons is squarely within it.

What should you do today?

Direct answer: make one phone call and take one walk. Ring your provider and ask whether your line has moved and when it will. Then follow every phone cable in the house and write down what it feeds. Everything else on this page follows from those two things.

The households that will have a bad February are not the ones who read a page like this. They are the ones who never had the conversation, whose letters went unopened, and who discover on the first of the month that the phone works oddly and the internet does not. The whole design of the process, from the two-channel contact rule to the 60-day notice for vulnerable customers, exists to prevent that. It only works if you are reachable.

If you are choosing a broadband and phone package for the first time, or your provider has told you that you need to move, start by seeing what is actually available at your address, because the options differ street by street and the old service is no longer one of them.

Frequently asked questions

Is the landline switch-off deadline definitely 31 January 2027?

Yes. The government's connectivity timeline states that all users of the Openreach public switched telephone network need to be migrated to new services by 31 January 2027. Openreach said on 30 July 2026 that there is no extension to the deadline. It was previously delayed from 31 December 2025, and it is not being delayed again.

What happens if I do nothing about the landline switch-off?

Your provider must first try to contact you three times using at least two channels, including a physical letter. If you do not respond, it must send a final notice giving no fewer than 30 days before ceasing the service, or 60 days if you have been identified as vulnerable. After the deadline, lines still on the old network may be moved to a basic voice fallback with broadband removed.

How many homes still have not switched to digital landlines?

Openreach said on 30 July 2026 that around 1.5 million lines were still on the old copper phone network, of which roughly 350,000 were business premises. That leaves something over a million homes. The figure has fallen fast, from around 2.8 million in February 2026 to 2.5 million in April and 1.9 million in June.

Do I need full fibre to switch to a digital landline?

No. Only the old analogue phone service is being switched off. Copper lines still exist and can carry a digital phone service and broadband over a product called SOGEA. If your provider has offered you full fibre that is a separate upgrade. A household without broadband may also be offered an interim exchange-based phone service by some providers.

Will my existing phone handset work after the switch?

Usually yes. In most cases the change is that your phone plugs into the phone port on the back of your broadband router, or into a small adapter, instead of the socket on the wall. A corded phone plugged into the router keeps working. Cordless handsets need mains power at the base, so they will not work in a power cut.

Will my extension sockets still work after switching to digital voice?

Not by default, because the phone service now comes from the router rather than the wall. Providers offer adapters so a handset can sit in another room. BT, for example, describes a Digital Voice Adapter that lets you place a handset wherever suits you. Tell your provider before the switch which rooms you use a phone in.

Will my landline work in a power cut after the switch?

Not on its own, because the router needs power. Ofcom requires providers to have at least one solution giving a minimum of one hour of access to emergency services in a power cut, free of charge to customers who depend on their landline. BT offers a battery back-up unit and a hybrid phone with a mobile SIM. Virgin Media offers an emergency backup line with about eight hours of standby.

What has my provider promised to do before switching me?

Under the government's March 2026 checklist, providers say they will contact you well in advance using at least two different forms of communication, state the proposed migration date, ask explicitly whether you use telecare, offer a free engineer visit where you need extra support, and restore your phone as a priority if you are vulnerable and it stops working after the change.

What else in my home uses the phone line?

Anything with a phone cable running to it. The common household items are a burglar alarm that dials out, a telecare or personal alarm, an older fax machine, and some smart meters and lift lines in flats. Walk round the house, follow every phone cable, and list what it feeds. Anything on the list needs checking with its supplier before the switch.

What is Emergency Voice Access?

It is Openreach's fallback for lines still on the old network after the deadline. Openreach describes it as a less feature-rich service with fewer calling features, and its briefing states that broadband on the line is removed as part of the move. Openreach piloted it in the Salisbury and Mildenhall exchange areas from 3 August 2026. It is a stopgap, not a replacement landline.

Will I be charged for switching to a digital landline?

Ask your provider, because packages differ. What is certain is that staying on the old line is getting dearer at the wholesale level. Openreach raised the basic line rental for legacy lines by 40 per cent on 1 July 2026 and will raise it by a further 40 per cent on 1 October 2026, doubling the price. Battery back-up units are free from providers to customers who depend on the landline.

Who do I call about the landline switch-off?

Your own phone provider first, using the number on your bill. The government's collection of switch-off guidance is on GOV.UK under Telecommunications Modernisation and points to the industry site digitalphoneswitchover.com. Your local council may have a digital team or digital champions who can help, and Ofcom's consumer pages explain the protections you are entitled to.

References

• BT. (n.d.). About Digital Voice. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.bt.com/help/landline/digital-voice
• BT. (n.d.). Digital Voice: Will my service work in a power cut? Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.bt.com/help/landline/digital-voice--will-my-service-work-in-a-power-cut-
• BT. (n.d.). Emergency Hybrid Home Phone. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.bt.com/help/landline/digital-voice/hybrid-phone
• BT. (n.d.). Set up a Battery Back Up. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.bt.com/help/landline/set-up-battery-back-up
• Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. (2026, March 24). Communication Providers Final Engagement Protocol. GOV.UK. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/communication-providers-final-engagement-protocol/communication-providers-final-engagement-protocol
• Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. (2026, March 24). Telecommunications Modernisation [Collection]. GOV.UK. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/telecommunications-modernisation
• Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. (2026, March 24). Telecoms Modernisation: Non-voluntary migration checklist. GOV.UK. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/telecoms-modernisation-non-voluntary-migration-checklist/telecoms-modernisation-non-voluntary-migration-checklist
• Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. (2026, July 29). Telecommunications Modernisation: Connectivity timeline. GOV.UK. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/telecommunications-modernisation-connectivity-timeline
• ISPreview. (2026, February 5). Openreach warn 500K UK business lines haven't switched away from legacy phones. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/02/openreach-warn-500k-uk-business-lines-havent-switched-away-from-legacy-phones.html
• ISPreview. (2026, April 27). Openreach pilot emergency UK phone lines for 2027 analogue switch-off. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/04/openreach-pilot-emergency-uk-phone-lines-for-2027-analogue-switch-off.html
• ISPreview. (2026, June 11). Openreach says no big bang in Jan 2027 when UK analogue phones switch-off. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/06/openreach-says-no-big-bang-in-jan-2027-when-uk-analogue-phones-switch-off.html
• ISPreview. (2026, August 1). Openreach warn 1.5 million UK analogue phone lines yet to make digital switch. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/07/openreach-says-1-5-million-uk-analogue-phone-lines-yet-to-make-digital-switch.html
• Leicestershire County Council. (n.d.). Digital landline switchover. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.leicestershire.gov.uk/leisure-and-community/digital-leicestershire/help-to-get-online/digital-landline-switchover
• Ofcom. (2018, October 10). Guidance: Protecting access to emergency organisations when there is a power cut at the customer's premises. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/123118/guidance-emergency-access-power-cut.pdf
• Ofcom. (2023, December 18). Protecting customers during the migration to digital landlines. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/landline-phones/protecting-customers-during-the-migration-to-digital-landlines
• Openreach. (2026, July 30). Openreach warns businesses: Just six months left before the UK's old phone network is switched off. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.openreach.com/news/openreach-warns-businesses-just-six-months-left-before-the-uks-old-phone-network-is-switched-off/
• thinkbroadband. (2026, July 31). Openreach nudging businesses who have ignored PSTN switch-off so far. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/openreach-nudging-businesses-who-have-ignored-pstn-switch-off-so-far
• Virgin Media. (n.d.). Digital Voice: Emergency Backup Line. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.virginmedia.com/help/landline/emergency-backup
• Which? (2026, July 7). Digital Voice and the landline phone switch-off: What it means for you. Retrieved 5 September 2026, from https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/broadband/article/digital-voice-and-the-landline-phone-switch-off-what-it-means-for-you-aPSOH8k1i6Vv

Written by Adrian James, Broadband Editor at BroadbandSwitch.uk (LinkedIn). Reviewed by Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith (LinkedIn). Published 5 September 2026, last verified 5 September 2026. The migration process and provider offers change, so check current details with your provider. This guide is information, not advice. If anyone in your home depends on a telecare or personal alarm, contact your provider and your alarm supplier before any change to your line.