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02 Oct 2023

Is your business ready for the impending switch to all-IP telecoms?

We’ve been making telephone calls over copper landlines since the days of plummy-voiced Post Office operators plugging cables into exchange switchboards. Now the deadline’s finally looming for the copper network’s retirement party. And Britain’s businesses are all but oblivious to the potential risks to their companies’ support and alarm services. Chris Pateman, co-founder of the Fit To Switch campaign, reports.

The switch to an all-IP future could impact businesses' emergency systems - stock.adobe.com

First the good news: Britain is heading full-speed towards a world-class digitally interconnected future where all telecommunications and data transactions take place over reliable high speed fibre optics.

Now the bad news: your existing automated key-holder alerts, fire alarms and remote back-office support services will probably stop working as a result.

BT argues that the old, familiar PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) copper infrastructure is well past its sell-by date, and costing a fortune to maintain. PSTN is already being retired in some parts of the country. It is due to be phased out completely across the UK by the end of 2025. And, as so often with business services, the devil is in the detail.

Many business managers have already benefited from a shift to all-IP telecoms, with its clever automatic call-forwarding to home workers, call hunt groups and rich recording and networking functionality. For many businesses, trading during the pandemic lock-downs would have been impossible without it.

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