The Great British Switch Off: Making the switch to modern communications

In our recent survey of 1,000 CEOs and IT decision makers across large and SME businesses we were able to assess their readiness for the PSTN/ISDN switch off. We found that some businesses were well prepared while others still had work to do.

In this article we will examine the awareness and readiness of businesses to make the switch.

Traditional telephony

The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) will be switched off in 2025, with products and services making use of it withdrawn from sale much earlier, but one in ten businesses are still reliant on traditional telephone services.

Those businesses that haven’t moved to Digital Voice or CloudComms will be in for a shock when they find their business communications no longer work.

But despite the sizeable minority of businesses that haven’t yet made the move, 97% of business leaders are now aware of the stop sell, up from 76% in 2020.

This is positive news but only 17% of businesses say they have an alternative solution already, and that figure is the same as in 2020.

Don’t lose your voice

That 97% figure quoted above means that 3% of business leaders are still completely unaware of the pending changes. And furthermore, nearly one in ten businesses are aware of the stop sell but don’t yet know their next steps.

These figures are higher among SMEs, suggesting that larger businesses are better prepared (with the opposite also being true).

Nearly half of the businesses we surveyed say their next point of contract renewal or termination is more than three years away, meaning that many businesses could well be spending money on unusable legacy communications well after the stop sell and switch off dates.

With the dates so close, businesses need to be making provisions now.

The scale of change

A third of businesses are currently spending £10,000 a year or more on their traditional telephone systems, suggesting that plenty of work remains to be done to ensure a smooth transition to modern communications over the next two years.

Is your business ready for the Great British Switch Off, or is legacy telephony holding you back?

For our full findings, including more on how the modern workforce is driving modern communications and how to make the switch, download our report, The Great British Switch Off: Business Communications for a New Era here.