THE GREAT BRITISH SWITCH-OFF
The telephone network that we’ve relied on for decades is coming to an end. The UK’s public switched telephone network (PSTN) is being shut down in 2025, and traditional telephony products will stop being sold in as little as 18 months’ time.
The PSTN closure puts on notice everything from your home landline to the office phone system, from burglar alarms to traffic lights. They’ll all need to be migrated to more modern, digital technology within the next few years or they’ll stop working. ISDN lines are another casualty.
We’ve spoken to the person responsible for managing the switch-off and other industry experts to find out precisely what effect this will have on consumers and businesses – and why you need to start planning now for the great British switch-off.
WHAT’S BEING SWITCHED OFF?
Although the switch-off hasn’t been widely publicised yet, there’s already some confusing, contradictory and wrong information being distributed about what’s being switched off (see the “What’s not being switched off?” box on p39), so let’s try and get to the bottom of it.
By far the most critical pieces of infrastructure to go are the phone lines. By 2025, every phone line in the country will be IP-based, instead of running over
