What’s happening, when and why?
In December 2025 the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) will switch off. The PSTN worked very well for the 20th century (it actually came into service in 1875!) but as data demands have increased it is unable to meet the needs of the world today. It requires vast sums of investment just to maintain it that are deemed better spent on developing faster technologies such as fibre.
The decision has been made to transition everyone over to digital services and focus on providing better connectivity with fibre as far as possible and use the remaining copper networks to provide ‘data only’ products. The Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) will also be switched off.
How does this affect me and what do i need to do?
If you have a traditional landline, an intruder alarm line, a care line, a lift emergency line or traditional PBX phone system running on ISDN then you need to either cancel the service or migrate it to a digital service. There are a variety of options available for each of these scenarios but in the most part we believe the easiest solution is to migrate your number into the BT IP Exchange and take advantage of the many features afforded by modern VoIP systems. If you do nothing, your number(s) will simply stop working and you will lose it, the number(s) will not be recoverable once the service has been ceased so they will be gone for good. Its worth noting that BT RedCare will also stop working on 1st August 2025.
In order to use VoIP you may need to have a broadband service in place (if you are using a physical handset for example), some customers simply use it to call forward to their mobile and so no broadband or handset is required. Most modern intruder alarms systems and lift alert systems now have the ability to operate via a mobile data sim card for a few pounds a month (something we can also provide) or have adapters to be able to connect them to a broadband service over wifi or an ethernet port.
What is the Hosted Voice service and how much is it?
Our Hosted Voice service comes in two flavours which are Call Forwarding and Fully Hosted
As the name suggests Call Forwarding is very simple and means that we migrate your telephone number(s) from your current provider onto our digital platform. From here we forward all calls to a pre-determined number. You have full control of that along with detailed analytics from within an online control panel meaning you can create call flows or change the divert number at any time you need to.
The Fully Hosted option is where we migrate your telephone number(s) from your current provider onto our digital platform and then provision them on one of our intelligent Yealink IP Handsets. These are excellent, feature rich digital handsets that give great call quality and there is the choice of either a desktop phone or cordless handset. You can have multiple numbers on each phone if required and all calls and users of the system can be managed through the online control panel with ease. So long as there is an internet connection these handsets will work from anywhere in the world so ideal for remote workers. Useful features like call divert, call recording and voicemail to email all come as standard.
The Call forwarding service is £9 per month with an inclusive minutes plan and the Fully Hosted service is just £12.95 per user per month with an inclusive minutes plan and both are on a 30-day rolling contract.
If you would like to know more or arrange a demonstration of the system, please contact us and one of the team can help. Call the office on 01582 383 280 or drop us a note through the contact page of the website.
