Good. And welcome to the PSTN switch off podcast series. My name is Dale Padgett. I’m the telecoms manager at university hospitals, Dorset, and I have with me David and Phil.
Hi. Yeah. David Christie. I am a senior regulatory and policy adviser with Virgin media O2.
Hi. I’m Phil Laws.
I’m a senior manager in the Open Reach All IP program.
Okay. Great.
So in previous episodes, we’ve already talked We’ve covered quite a lot of ground already haven’t we in previous episodes.
One of the things that we did talk about was this this sort of looming deadline of April twenty twenty five what are the other key dates as we go along this time scale?
Well, it’s worthwhile saying actually in terms of your question, you didn’t quite get them right Oh, sorry.
So I I will happily correct you. So so the the the end time scale that Openreach you’re working to, and I know that Dave from Virgin Media. They sort of had a similar time frame they’re working to. So it’s the end of twenty twenty five. So December twenty twenty five. Which is the withdrawal of our legacy products impacted by the PSG enclosure that the next bringing things forward the next key date is September twenty twenty three, which is our UK national stop sell. That’s the point where no more sales of a of legacy products will be actually taken and just coming back further towards the near the imminent future is that we have trials running at the moment.
In Salisbury and Mildenhall to prove and test all the processes and the withdrawal for that is April, which is maybe where April came from. It’s April twenty twenty three which are five months away in terms of that activity.
Okay. And are these states the same nationally or will there be regional variations?
So so in so again looking at the far end.
So December twenty twenty five, that’s that’s UK wide. September twenty twenty three, which is a stop sell UK wide. The trial we have at the moment is only in two locations, which is Salisbury and Mildenhall. Okay.
I think it’s it’s interesting to note though. Those are the the outreach date and, the dates that individual communications provide us so that that the people who sell the services to end users, businesses, residential customers will be different to the dates that the Openreach have. So Virgin Media o two has a separate network from Openreach.
As Phil mentioned, our data are slightly different.
And what we’re doing is we are looking at our switches that need to be upgraded to IP, and we’re looking to change those out in the run up to a similar time. The end of twenty twenty five is our our end date as well.
But each individual switch will have its own date.
So what we’re doing now is we’re writing out to our business customers typically twelve months in advance of the switch that they’re connected to coming to the end of its life. And giving those businesses at least twelve months notice of that change date.
Okay.
But as has been said previously, on, on the other episodes, the if you can get ahead of the curve as a business, that is a thing to do here. So if you haven’t had the letter and you’re a customer of VMO too, just give your account manager a call. Have that conversation now and gain yourself an extra six months, twelve months because then you’ll be able to better plan, how you migrate, you’ll be in more control as as to how you migrate. And I think, you know, going going back to, to your dates, Phil, it’s probably right to say that individual CP will set their own timetable.
Correct.
And those dates that you’ve described relate to when the services you supply to the CP will be disappearing from from sale and then from from existence.
That’s right. And Openreach sells to something like, I think six hundred ninety communication providers and the thing is you’re not going to get alignment between the you will not get an agreement between all six and twenty nineteen. That’s not going to happen. So each one is looking at it from their own perspective in terms of the markets they serve, some are residential, some are business, small, medium, large, what have you, some are retail only, some wholesale, and therefore there’ll be a disparity in terms of what the communication providers do. The the key thing we say, I know that’s a this occurred with with virgin media as well is, don’t hang about.
Don’t delay, you know, now is the time to do something. If you if you’ve If you’ve only just come across it, think about what what services do you have, think about creating a plan, talk to your communication providers, and plan for the migration. Don’t delay because if you do delay, you could be disappointed down line when, for example, resources aren’t available to migrate you in time.
Okay.
Right. You referred to giving customers twelve months notice.
How how long does it typically take to get a customer migrated?
It’s it’s a good question, and it depends on the the type of use that that customer has. So a residential customer, if it’s a straightforward residential customer, we’ll give them a three months notice.
Because that’s typically asking them to unplug, from the wall socket and plug in to their router So it’s a very simple migration process for that customer.
So so straightforward that actually, a customer doesn’t need an engineer visit they can do that themselves, provided they’ve got the the right broadband to hub. So it it’s super straight forward. So that that’s a really low notice period and very easy process.
They might get the letter three months in. They can phone up and say, can I migrate far sooner than that? Absolutely.
You then move to customers who are more vulnerable. As residential customers, they might have connected devices such as a care alarm. So they will get six months notice. Twice as long. It gives them a bit more time to work with, us as their communication provider.
And that typically that enables them to, to to make a bit more an informed choices to to how they want to continue to receive the service because it’s a little bit more specialized.
Then moving to business, that’s where the twelve months comes in.
And typically we want to give businesses that longer time because they have more complex needs, typically, you might get a business with just telephone lines, but that they’ll get twelve months anyway, which is is good.
And I think, you know, that that that allows them to to have that that thought process. If they need to to order new kits, new equipment, it allows them a little bit more time to do that, but that that’s if you receive the notice to say we are now migrating you. Your switch will be closing on November twenty twenty three if it was, coming out today, you know, if if they can get in touch earlier, then all all the better. And we’ve had, we’ve we’ve been through this migration process, for a little while.
We’ve been migrating, some customers this year We’re aiming to migrate more switches next year, twenty twenty three, and more switches in twenty twenty four but typically where you get those more reactive customers who are reacting to communications rather than trying to work in a some more proactive collaborative sense, they tend to be more difficult, migrations because things get left to the end, they tend to be well, how how far can I push it rather than how quickly can I migrate to a a smoother solution? So it’s definitely, an easier process if if you’ve got more time to do with it.
And so from an openreach perspective, as I say, we we wholesale So it’s very much in terms of what what Dave is described. That’s the sort of thing that each of our communication provider customers has to decide for themselves into what they’re going to do as as a wholesale provider, we’re we’re we’re simply waiting there for their orders.
And all we ask is the orders coming sooner on later you know, don’t back end things because if you do, we could be in for trouble.
Yeah. Okay. So in in terms of trying to encourage people to move sooner rather than later. I guess, if they can see the real benefits of doing that, that will probably encourage them to to to to make that early, early decision. So what what are the, what are the sort of additional benefits that, that customers will get?
So so in in terms of, the openreach network, so we’re providing you know, significant, FTTP found for the premise capability. We’ve got a twenty five million bill that we intend to complete by the end of twenty twenty six and fiber generally IP services generally, they provide far greater bandwidth in terms of broadband performance. But also what you tend to see is it’s a more reliable resilient network, and the quality of voice, the voice call quality is is typically better. Typically, not not always, but it depends what you’re what you’re moving from and to.
And, you know, we we do offer because we want people to move as well, we offer incentives.
A bit of a carrot to incentive IC piece to move sooner rather than later.
The big the big thing to point in might point out though is that We’re doing this for a reason. It’s not for the fun of it. You know, the network the network is, you know, it’s getting old. There aren’t the people there to support it both within, the BT group. And also our the beta group supplier organizations, the resources are going, and the network will fail. And the idea is to get getting get there in advance to mitigate for the the risk of failure.
Okay.
And, I think in one of the previous episodes, we we talked about the demise of facts and the fact that facts will no longer be supported, on the new, the new infrastructure, the new network. But if people have got, an old traditional modem connected to a piece of will that still work, or do they need to find a new alternative for that?
That’s a good question. And Who knows? It depends what the equipment is. So, Openreach don’t know what’s connected on the end of our telephone lines, an interestingly our customers as communication providers don’t always know either. And you mentioned facts that, I mean, there are IP, facts equivalents that that demands buying a box of tricks to connect your facts to or buying a new facts. And one of the things we do know is the the legal profession.
Is is heavily reliant upon the fact it’s considered a legal document, and interestingly the, in the, football transfer season as well because these last minute transfers are all done by fax. So given the demise that they have to think of a different way of doing So it’s just one of those things. And in fact, it’s just one example. You know, there’s a whole stack of examples once you start thinking about it. Things like lift lines. And you can’t operate a block of flats people live without a functioning lift line. And if that if that is based upon an analog line, He has to be replaced with something different.
And there’s there’s no end of examples like that, which is why Openreach and and Dave will talk with Virgin Media and other CPs have test labs. So people can bring along whatever equipment they like. They can connect up to these various routers to find out will it function? If not, why not can they fix it? Is it okay? So if you’ve got to bite the bullet and change change said equipment?
It’s quite an interesting example over the fax machine because as you say, one way you can go is you can set up to replace the fax machine by, technology that’s available now. But actually, if what your business needs is an ability to send the document from a to b, there are many alternative ways of doing that in a far easier basis.
And, you know, the fax machine might become redundant for your organization simply because you can do things better using alternative digital technology. And that’s really quite quite a helpful analogy in terms of assessing what you need to do as a business in terms of migration. What are you using the the line for today?
And do you need to replace the line like for like with a a IP voice line or could you move to a different technology altogether, which would give you a better result. And going back to the, you know, what’s the advantage to migrate, that that’s one of the big areas. So, as has been mentioned, you know, a lot of, businesses have moved to, you see and and teams has become quite ubiquitous in terms of how phone calls are made to staff working remotely at different offices or working from home. And all of that is not driven necessarily by the the the migration to IP, but it’s being driven by the pandemic.
So, you know, the advantage to those companies who’ve chosen to let’s let’s get on board and move to a far more, tech savvy, use of of of technology to enable remote working and and make sure it all works for for that. They’ve got that ability built in now and they’re they’re IP friendly if they’ve done it in the right way, for to to for tomorrow. So it’s it’s it’s quite quite interesting to see how the the last couple of years of actually change the environment to drive some migration, not by virtue of the the nature of the, the requirement to move off. PSTN copper, but by simply the way that that the working working place has changed.
What other issues might companies need to think about in terms of their own timeline.
I think I think it’s an interesting question. And and one thing that that that’s come into us is the the fact that there is quite a lot of, demand and, limited supply of certain equipment that companies are looking to use to replace devices they use today.
We’ve worked with a number of public sector organizations who have been moving from analog, based care devices to digital care devices, and a lot of, feedback we’ve received has been about the the internet chip shortage, which means that they’re the lead time for replacement equipment, which is not the telecoms equipment that we supply but equipment they get in from their third party suppliers is not immediately available.
So it’s actually the there’s two parts of the question.
When you’re looking to migrate, what telecom service do you get from your communications provider?
And what services do you want to run off that that might be coming from a third party supplier, separate supplier, and that could be, Let’s not go back to fax machines, not there.
Well, but it could be those those care alarms and and that they’re in, the the lead times for for delivery of those equipment are are going out to many, many weeks. So that’s got to be factored into any any migration journey. It could be simple something as simple as, payment terminals, which are vital for any business, but can you get a replacement payment terminal if that’s something that isn’t there. And I think the the going back to the the underlying issue of of the the network provision that you from your communication provider. Again, that depends on how complex your business needs are and what replacement solutions are out there. And I know in previous podcasts, we’ve talked about, big enterprises from the utility sector needing to replace, monitoring lines that that won’t necessarily have an easy like for like replacement.
So if you’re moving from a voice line solution to something that is completely different in terms of an alternative technology, designed to replace the functionality of something but is a different solution. Again, that might have an impact on how that is going to be delivered in terms of timing. But I think, you know, how do you mitigate that, and that’s what it comes comes back to the same point that we made earlier, if you have those conversations earlier, you can factor in that timeline a lot more easily than if you’re down to getting the notice that you read, you maybe put off for a month, and then you’ve only got eleven months, and then There’s a another month of of doing and fraying, and all of a sudden, a deadline starts looming, and things become a lot more difficult then.
So I think, you know, it’s it’s a great point. I think that there’s a lot of time time pressure that comes in from both the comms industry side. But also from third party sites as well that needs to be factored in.
And I would add as well, I think that the smaller the business typically, you know, debt down to a sort of single single person business.
They haven’t necessarily got the bandwidth to think about these things and it could get sort of put off a bit, which is where I think communication providers can actually help them understand the the what’s going on to make sure they’re prepared and to start creating a plan. And and then go to bigger businesses where you might have IT manager or telecoms manager, whose whose job it is to think about these things. What the one thing I’ll say to them is, don’t underestimate the amount of time it could take you to ward not necessarily your premise or your outstations or nationally, whatever it might be, where a lot of companies take doing these audits, and and lines sort of pop out the woodwork. People didn’t know they had them.
They were installed donkey’s years ago for a project and just left there, some some were running key applications and way of one one, government agency who didn’t know what the lines were used for and just just cut them off.
You know, that’s one thing people said just cut it off and see what happens. And, you know, half an hour later, the building was surrounded by police because it was it was tied in with a security alarm and people didn’t know. And that’s a government department. So, you know, invest the time to understand, you know, what what are the lines used for on some of the use case and to consolidate, or do I have a plan to migrate them, soon more than later?
Okay.
I think it’s in our interest as well as on the communication provider side. The industry.
We we’ve got a lot of customers out there, and the the deadline date is the end of twenty twenty five, December twenty twenty five.
But if everyone turns up in November twenty twenty five, that would be quite a lot of people to, be a very busy Christmas that year.
It’s not good.
So ideally, of course, you know, you’d to spread that out across the next three years and, evenly spread the the the the effort out to migrate everybody. We know that that’s that’s not going to happen exactly perfectly, but, yeah, the the more we can encourage earlier migrations, the better it will be in terms experience, I think, for for all customers generally.
Yes. Be be the last minute rush.
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. I I hope to be taking Christmas twenty twenty five off.
Phil, I don’t know about you.
Yes.
Thank you very much for your time today. It’s it’s been very informative.
