Special services

Homes and businesses use their phone lines for more than just making calls. There’s a wide range of equipment used for multiple solutions. If you provide or are involved in the provision of any equipment that works using our phone network, please read on. 

The Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) will close in December 2025.

By then, every phone line in the UK will have moved to a fully digital network that uses Internet Protocol (IP) across a fibre-based service.

This won’t just affect voice services; it may also mean you need to upgrade your broadband.

Any equipment that remains connected to the PSTN will stop working alarms, EPOS machines, door entry systems, CCTV, faxes, and so on.

The Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) will also stop working.

In readiness for this, Openreach are rolling out Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre to the Premises (FTTP).

Our current network is old and difficult to maintain. As an essentially 20th century technology, the PSTN is increasingly out of kilter with the demands of 21st century communications.

Traditional phone usage is changing everywhere as people switch to mobile and internet communications. We all expect much more from modern phone services than the traditional technologies can deliver. Digital is the answer.

At some point before 2025, customers will need to move from PSTN to the latest IP technology.

To help make that possible, Openreach is busy rolling out the full fibre network (fibre to the premises or FTTP) in phases across the UK. We’ll stop selling traditional phone lines in all exchange areas by September 2023.

Across BT our Consumer and Business customers, are likely to have a wide range of equipment which is connected to phone lines Including the examples above.

Any equipment connected to fixed phone lines will need to be IP compatible for it to continue working after 2025. This means anyone who supplies these products and services may need to carry out testing to make sure that their products and services will continue to work on an All-IP network.

Analogue Terminal Adaptors (ATA): These devices can be used to connect a traditional analogue device to a digital system to convert to IP. Consumer hubs provided have an Internal ATA.  An ATA is an interim solution and testing is essential. 

We have opened a BT funded, digital services lab at Adastral Park near Ipswich, our research and development site, for customers or vendors to come and test your services in this new digital world.

We also want to help you benefit from this opportunity to develop innovative new products and services. You can see a list of who's visited our lab on our page.

If you would like to book into our test labs (free of charge) to test your equipment please fill in the form to contact us and we’ll aim to get back to you within two working days.

We look forward to working with you.

Since 2018 we have been working with customers, manufacturers and industries to capture as much details as possible on how our customers use their telephone lines, these are categorised as user cases. We have approx. 200 cases identified, but we are sure there could potentially be more. If your user case is not listed above, please reach out to us enterprise.ip.transformation@bt.com  so we can work with you to ensure your case is identified and solutions can be developed.