// PSTN SWITCH-OFF · 31 JANUARY 2027
The switch-off will catch you out on the lines that aren’t phones
Lifts, fire panels, alarms, door entry, card machines and the spare line in the plant room. Most are on analogue lines nobody can find on a bill — and the replacement loses something the old line had for free.
- ● Deadline: 31 January 2027
- ● Life-safety kit flagged
- ● Independent — we sell no phone systems
Independent, and dated. 365 Techies is an independent IT firm. We are a Dell reseller and a Microsoft partner; we are not an authorised partner, reseller or agent of SonicWall, Fortinet, WatchGuard, Sophos, Cisco, Cisco Meraki, Ubiquiti or any other vendor named on this page, and we have no access to their support entitlements on your behalf. Every quoted behaviour comes from the vendor’s own documentation, linked in the source column, and was checked on 27 July 2026. Where we could not verify something from a vendor source we say “check with vendor” rather than guess. We publish no prices for this work — every site is different, and we would rather give you a real number on the phone than a fake one here.
The lines that will catch you out are not the phones
Most businesses have the phone system in hand. What catches people is everything else quietly sitting on an analogue line — often a line nobody can find on a bill, installed by a contractor years ago, documented nowhere.
Two dates get conflated constantly. National stop-sell has been live since September 2023 — you cannot buy new analogue lines. The hard switch-off, when the network is turned off, is 31 January 2027.
Source: Openreach: the switch to digital phone linesChecked: 27 July 2026. Vendors reword their documentation and move their dates. If you are making a decision on something below, open the vendor link and check it yourself — then tell us if it has moved and we will correct this page.
Walk the building. Look for these.
Start with the safety-critical ones. If any of these are on an analogue line, they need a designed replacement, not a swap — and somebody responsible for the building needs to know.
Lifts
A lift emergency phone is a legal safety requirement. It is often on the oldest, least-documented line in the building.
Fire alarm signalling
Panels that dial an alarm receiving centre. If the line dies, the signalling path dies silently.
Intruder alarms
Same story — the alarm still sounds locally, but nobody is told.
Then the ones that stop you trading.
Door entry systems
Entry phones that dial out to a mobile, common on gated sites and flats above business premises.
Card machines (PDQ)
Older terminals dial out over analogue. When the line goes, so does taking payment.
Franking machines
Post-room kit that dials to top up credit.
Plant and lift rooms
The spare line put in years ago for an engineer to use, documented nowhere.
ISDN30 into a phone system
The one people do remember — but the replacement needs planning, not a swap.
Three traps nobody mentions in the sales call
Line power disappears. An analogue line carried its own power, so a corded phone worked in a power cut. The replacement runs on your broadband and your electricity. If a lift phone or fire panel depends on it, that is a life-safety change, not a technical one — and it needs a battery or a mobile fallback designed in.
The mobile fallback may be on a network being switched off too. Replacement alarm and lift diallers often use a mobile signal. 2G and 3G are themselves being retired in the UK, so a GSM dialler fitted as a fix can need replacing again. Ask which mobile generation the device uses before you buy it.
A bill that jumps with no change of service. Wholesale line rental charges have escalated ahead of the switch-off. If a line’s cost rose and nothing about it changed, that is why — and it is a signal to audit rather than absorb.
What to do, in order
Sorting a home phone line rather than a business one? We have a plain-English guide for that — it is a different job with different answers.
Not sure which case you are in?
Tell us the make and model and we will tell you what your situation actually is — no charge for the answer, and no quote unless you ask for one. We always ring before we connect to anything.
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