The Great British Switch Off: What it is and why it's happening

When we talk about the impending switch off of analogue (PSTN and ISDN) telephone services, it’s easy to make the assumption that businesses are fully prepared.

However, our own research indicates that, for example, 17% of large businesses are unaware that PSTN and ISDN products will no longer be sold from 2023.

Furthermore, a number of businesses that are aware of the stop sell are currently unsure about their next steps.

It seems then that awareness is still a significant issue. The good news is that we’re still nearly three years away from the September 2023 stop sell date, with end of life taking place in late 2025. And that means businesses still have plenty of time to ensure they’re fully prepared for the transition.

What is it?

As existing legacy infrastructure becomes more restrictive and costly to maintain, traditional telephony is being withdrawn to make way for a system that will rely on data connections.

As broadband has evolved from almost entirely copper-based to largely, and increasingly, dependent on fibre, so too has its reliability and performance. In the meantime, copper-based telephony services have remained largely unchanged over a number of years.

But as full fibre becomes more and more ubiquitous, the ability to integrate voice communications into our broadband networks becomes a natural choice, and one that will enable a step change in performance and the availability of more powerful voice services.

Proper preparation, etc.

Naturally, you’ll have existing contracts that need to be navigated. This advance notice of switch off gives businesses the opportunity to think about their next deal, to ensure they’re not left with suboptimal legacy systems when the time comes.

And when we consider that most of the businesses (72%) we surveyed use telephony for customer communications, it’s clearly still a big deal.

But those customer (and internal, and supplier) communications could be so much better.

Flexible and remote

These two words are key to understanding how the Great British Switch Off can be seen as a real business opportunity.

With reliable, high performance data connections comes the possibility of new types of communication, like cloud comms, that could transform the way we communicate.

2020 was the year remote working went mainstream, and many of the businesses we’ve asked plan to keep it that way. But remote working brings challenges: connectivity of course, but also effective communication.

Future-proof communication services promise to transform the way we do business with our customers and each other. And that’s where the Great British Switch Off, while potentially daunting in its premise, can provide the impetus for significant business transformation.

For an informal introduction to some of the things you need to start thinking about today, check out our podcast on the subject.