The PSTN switch-off.
What it means for
telecare before January 2027.
By this time next year, the copper phone network most of the UK’s pendant alarms and community alarm units have quietly relied on for decades will no longer exist. “We’ll deal with it later” is no longer a safe answer.
The copper network is going.
The date will not move again.
The Public Switched Telephone Network — the analogue copper line that has carried UK landline calls since the Victorian era — is being retired. Openreach stopped selling new analogue landline products in September 2023. The final retirement date is now locked at 31 January 2027. Openreach and Ofcom have both been explicit: this date will not move again.
From that point, every landline call in the UK will travel over a digital connection — voice over IP, riding on the same broadband line as the internet — rather than the dedicated copper circuit that has powered phones and everything plugged into them independently of the mains for well over a century.
Migration is already happening exchange-by-exchange across the country. Waiting until the deadline arrives is not the same as having time until the deadline.
Two things that don’t carry over
automatically.
Most equipment attached to a phone line simply stops working if it’s incompatible, and someone notices fairly quickly. Telecare is different: pendant alarms and community alarm units are designed to work precisely when something has already gone wrong, often for people who are alone, frail, or unable to raise the issue themselves.
Power resilience
Copper lines have traditionally stayed live during a mains power cut because the phone exchange supplies the power. A digital line needs the customer’s own router and equipment to have power. Battery backup provision has become a central part of the migration conversation — but it requires active confirmation per user, not a blanket assumption.
Signalling compatibility
Many older analogue alarm units use signalling methods that digital lines don’t reproduce identically. An alarm unit that isn’t confirmed as digital-compatible can silently fail — appearing to work in daily use but not actually able to raise an alert when it matters.
⚠️ Neither of these is an unsolvable problem. But both require someone to have actively checked, tested, and confirmed compatibility for every individual telecare user before their line is migrated — not after.
The safeguards exist.
They don’t remove local responsibility.
The industry and regulator haven’t left this entirely to chance. But the protections in place require active local engagement to work.
PSTN Charter (December 2023)
Major communications providers committed not to migrate telecare users unless their device has been confirmed compatible with the new digital line, and to provide battery backup where needed.
Openreach Prove Telecare (October 2025)
A service that allows a telecare device to be tested against the digital network before a customer’s line is actually switched — so incompatibility is caught in advance, not discovered in an emergency.
12-month notice requirement
Ofcom requires network operators to give communications providers at least 12 months’ notice before migrating an exchange area — specifically to allow time to identify and support telecare users first.
The 2024 precedent. Ofcom fined Virgin Media £23.8 million for failures in how it handled vulnerable customers during service changes — a reminder that good intentions on paper don’t guarantee good outcomes on the ground, and that oversight from people who actually know the individual user matters.
Six steps.
Time-sensitive.
Audit your telecare user base now
Identify everyone still connected via an analogue line and cross-reference against your provider’s confirmed digital-compatible equipment list.
Don’t assume “digital-ready” means tested
Where there’s any doubt, use compatibility testing — such as Openreach’s Prove Telecare service — before migration, not after.
Confirm battery backup individually
Not as a blanket assumption — and check how long that backup actually lasts in a real power cut.
Get ahead of the 12-month notice window
By the time a migration notice arrives, the safest approach is to already know which of your users need extra support arranged.
Build a data-sharing process with your communications provider
Councils and housing associations hold the information about who is genuinely dependent on their alarm. Providers hold the migration schedule. Both are needed. Coordination between them has been one of the more persistent friction points nationally.
Don’t let users find out the hard way
A telecare user who discovers their alarm is non-functional during an actual emergency is the worst-case outcome — and an entirely preventable one if the process above has been followed.
Is a pendant alarm after something goes wrong
really the best use of this opportunity?
There’s a version of this transition that treats it as a like-for-like technical migration: same pendant alarm, same pull cord, just running over a different cable. That’s the minimum viable response, and for many providers under time pressure, it will be the one they take.
But January 2027 is also a natural moment to ask a bigger question: now that every telecare user’s equipment is being touched, tested, and in many cases replaced anyway — is a decades-old alarm model, reactive and pendant-dependent, really the best use of that opportunity?
⚡ We’ll be exploring what a more proactive, non-invasive alternative can look like in future pieces. For now: know who your telecare users are, and make sure none of them find out the hard way that their line has changed.
The immediate priority
Identify every telecare user on an analogue line. Confirm compatibility. Confirm battery backup. Don’t wait for the migration notice.
The deadline
31 January 2027. Migration is already happening exchange by exchange. The notice window is shorter than it looks.
The bigger question
Once every device is being touched anyway — is this the moment to move from reactive alarms to proactive, continuous monitoring?
Part of an ongoing series
on the future of technology-enabled care.
If you commission, deliver, or depend on telecare, we’d welcome a conversation about what’s changing and what that means in practice for your organisation.
Sources
- PSTN Network Operators’ Charter — GOV.UK
- Protecting customers during the migration to digital landlines — Ofcom
- Ofcom fines Virgin Media £23.8 million for putting vulnerable customers at risk — Ofcom
- Openreach clears major hurdle to PSTN switch-off — Openreach
- Openreach to make phone switch safer with Prove Telecare — Openreach
- The switch to digital landlines — House of Commons Library
- Digital switchover hub — Local Government Association