Tom Boyle head of telecoms at Sheffield teaching hospitals and the co chair of the best values group for the telecoms industry within the NHS.
This is episode one of the podcast series that we’re doing on the PSTN switch off. I’m joined by David and Sarah.
Hi. I’m, David Christie. I’m a senior regulatory and policy adviser with Virgin Media O2. And, we’re one of the networks that is switching off the PSTN.
I’m Sarah Shepherd. I, I work here at Tech more up-to-dateUK.
I’m I’m working in the world has been created, by the communication providers of Begium Media to Talk Talk, BT, and an Openreach.
And we’re working while I work on all things, did your friends reach over. It’s got many names. And I’m I’m here kind of representing where industry working together can overcome similar challenges, and where we can add value if you’re speaking with one voice.
Brilliant. So I suppose we launch straight into it. What is the PSTN switch-off?
PSTN switch off. PSTN is a public switched telephone network.
So that is currently running on technology that is, apparently older than us, and therefore is in need of decommissioning. Which makes me feel particularly old.
But essentially the the technology’s been there for decades. We’re running out of technicians who know how to repair it. We’re running out of, support from manufacturers. So the switch manufacturers don’t support the types of technology that is used in the network.
And if we didn’t move to a a mon up to date technology, the telephone network as we know it would become unreliable.
And fundamentally, all of this is about ensuring that the end user still gets working services thathat they need to, to do their business for their job.
That’s fantastic.
Older than as it’s much older than some of us. Alright.
It the PSM switch off is also I mean, it’s got many names, digital phones switch over, IP voice migration, all IP.
There’s there’s been a few. Yes.
But many names, all means sensing, it depends whether or not you’re talking to, like, moving towards digital phone lines. And away from the PSTN.
I think it aligns as well with the, rollout of, broadband as well.
So as fiber broadband or fibre networks become more prevalent, fibre to the premise, those networks need a digital voice service for, for voice comms.
And that’s also driving the need to moved to the new technology, IP voice technology away from traditional, PSTN over copper.
So as you touched on it, then about the fundamentals of it and how it affected the end user. I suppose a good place to start then is how it affects the end user in a residential term. In residential sense, and then we can touch them out that affects us, obviously, businesses.
So, I mean, what what was what’s it gonna look like for the for a customer, I suppose?
Yeah. And I think I think the it’s a really good question because a lot of customers out there don’t know that this is happening. So that probably goes for for businesses as well, especially small businesses, micro enterprises, but, you know, what what’s changing? And actually, if you use the line for a telephone line, which is the typical use case for residential users, very little will change. So you will literally be told to unplug your phone from the wall socket, plug it into your router, and it will continue working, same ringtone, same number, same handset, nothing changes, and you probably won’t notice a great deal of difference.
Where you, move to a business setting, you tend to use lines slightly differently.
So there’d be multi lines with ISDN product There’ll be, different use cases. So you might run, monitoring over a an analog telephony line. And those did different use cases will need slightly different migration solutions. So there’s a there’s quite a a subtle difference between your typical residential end user and a a business user.
I think and something I suppose worth remembering is that a lot of a lot of customers don’t actually use their landline, they may have it, but they don’t use it. So for them, it won’t even be that like for like telephone transition. It would just be like you no longer have a landline. If you still want to have that landline functionality, then there is an option, and that’s where communication providers will provide a a digital voice or a digital phone line solution. You’ll have many different brand names, but it’s, it’s it’s that easy manageable like for like a transition.
I suppose touching on the the split, which they obviously mentioned about residential and then business. What what what are the benefits for for both sort of different areas and what’s the benefit for for a residential customer? What’s the benefit for a business? What’s the benefit for the telcos as well?
Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, it’s going back to that that reason for moving. The big benefit is your network will still work in two, three, four, five years time, whereas if we did nothing, it wouldn’t because we wouldn’t be able to repair it as a as a as a communication provider. So that that’s the big driver.
I think from from a business perspective, there are a lot more opportunities that you get from moving to IP based comes.
And, you know, over the last couple of years, we’ve had the pandemic. So that’s really forced the pace of businesses looking at how to how to develop their comms, and and, you know, make them them fit for purpose. So you look at, the need to integrate home working. In your your business, you know, can you have an employee who was sat in the office in two thousand and nineteen doing their job as efficiently with a laptop in their front room, using teams and and all of that. And, you know, integrated IP comes, mean that is far more easily achieved than if you rely on on, the sort of very traditional single voice line, product that that you could run over over the PSTN. So that that’s certainly, I think one really sort of eye opener as to to why it’s it’s actually a good thing to move to the future.
And then the other the other things are the the vast number of applications that are coming into into market. So you look at a sector such as as health care, where where you work you know, not so much hospital based, but, remote based, systems.
So you can get connected systems to monitor different, different things going on in the home, and it potentially allows people to to receive a better standard of care whilst remaining in home rather than having to perhaps compromise where they they live or or even traveling to hospitals for checkups and things like that. So there are definite opportunities there.
So the benefits, as as they’ve said, your your phone will continue to function. I think the last two separate issues is the the switch off the copper network, which is, the successful switch of the PSTN is that precursor to speaking of that copper, and that moved towards full fiber. Gigabit cable networks, and that’s the direction of growth of the UK. That’s kind of the government’s, ambition was to in words, it borrows to have full fiber sprouting, have everywhere for every home.
But that that is meeting the needs and the demands of the UK, and allowing Britain to keep pace with the rest of the world?
We’re not touched on time scales. Yeah. Is it a good is it a good maybe place to start with twenty twenty five being the angle and we work back there just to explain how that’s gonna look in terms of a period of time.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, twenty twenty five, and I think the, the point we’re discussing before about, you know, people’s awareness of it, I think people have, snippets of information. And twenty twenty five is is one of those dates seems to be associated with this this whole thing, but it’s good to get that in context.
So, twenty twenty five is a date that’s been set by Openreach which is, the the largest network infrastructure provider in the UK. They they’ve said that. They predominantly wholesale their network out to other communication providers, the big names that that operate, and they have said that they will be withdrawing their WLS services, so the wholesale line rental services that provide that analog voice service in December twenty twenty five. So that means it will become completely out of the market to any communication provider that uses those Openreach lines at that point, but what it doesn’t tell you or doesn’t tell certain businesses and and end users is when will that mean that their CP will decide to change in the run up to twenty twenty five because the CP will know that their supplier Openreach will be switching the line off in December twenty twenty five.
So they will be thinking, well, I’ll move my customers over in first half of twenty twenty four. Some in the second half of twenty twenty four, some in the first half of twenty twenty five. So it’s really important to, I think, for everyone to realize this is an ongoing activity from now through to the end of that, that, that time period.
And, so Virgin Media two runs a separate network But it’s the same reason that there’s driven openreach to set that timetable, the the the needs to move off the the legacy network so we’re running a very similar timetable, and we’re looking to migrate customers across our network over the next couple of years at twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five.
What that means is speech to your communication provider now, so that you know what their plans are for your business because it it could be nothing will happen the next two years. It could be something’s gonna happen in eight months time. Something’s gonna happen in eight months time you need to know now. And that that’s a really key point. So it’s a great question.
Yes. And I think worth remembering as well that the customers, are free to move whenever. If if there’s a if they want to move to the digital phone line sooner, wanna move to a four or five year network, which will come with a giga phone line, they can do that now.
To again, speak to their communications provider.
And it’s an interesting point and, I’m sure in in, in in your business as well in terms of, how your coms are structured. A lot of businesses will already be using IP solutions, and the vast majority of business solutions are already IP. So actually, you know, have you got to do anything with those? No. They’re they’re all all sorted. It’s the odd line here and there, and it’s the legacy systems that you have within your your estate.
That need to be moved or looked at migrated, maybe change from using a phone line to using a data service if it’s a particular application. So I think, I think it’s it’s it’s in some ways, you say twenty twenty five is a big shift. Actually, for some businesses, They won’t need to do anything because they might be all IP today. So there’s absolutely nothing to do. Some businesses will need to just ensure they’ve they’ve assess what they’ve got in their their comms setup and change the couple of lines that are still analog.
PSTN, and some businesses will need to do something more substantial because they’ve got the old stuff and they need to swap the whole thing yet. So it very much depends what what kind of business and and what kind of comm setup you’ve got there.
And just going right back to basics, then what happens if your a residential customer or you’re a business and you don’t do anything, what what would happen post sort of December twenty five or whatever date that comes sooner, if obviously you’re on a network comes before then?
It depends on the strategy that your communication provider has. So it could be take the example of residential customer. Very straightforward. They’ve got one line into their house, and at the moment it comes into the wall. They’ve probably got broadband, so they’ve probably got the hub there, which will power the digital voice service.
So actually they’ll be automatically enabled at some point to say you’ve been switched over from the analog service to a digital service. If they left the phone plugged into the wall, they wouldn’t have a phone service. They would need to physically plug it into the router. But as soon as they did that, they’d be back up and running. So they they wouldn’t have particularly a a very interrupted, period of of time without any voice service, or it’d be but pretty straightforward to swap. With a business, ultimately the service that is being provided, will stop at the point that that migration date is set. And let’s say that that’s set by the CP.
So if you’re an open reach provided CP, that will be set some point prior to December twenty twenty five, but that CP will tell the customer this is the date that your service will stop if that customer does absolutely nothing ignores all the comms, that service will not continue. So if they’re running their, payment terminal over an analog line, they won’t be able to take payments after that particular date.
There isn’t always that like for like transition, so it’s not always in the simple, this is your phone line. So you just kind of switch your, where it’s plugged into. And it’s, it’s that awareness, which I think is why It’s really important to be preparing now and understanding what what uses your line, the vast majority of residential customers is gonna be the phone line is using their phone line.
But there will be telecare pendants, healthcare pendants, there may be, burglar, there may, I can’t remember there was a percentage I think eight percent of phone lines have something else hanging off of it. So it is, it’s getting that awareness of what that actually means, for residential customer, so if they’re gonna see you like you, understand how it is that they’ll be migrating their phone line for a business very often it’ll be quite a simple transition, but there will be those, those use cases is, special services hanging off the PSTM that some very clever engineers put in place twenty, thirty, forty years ago. The communications provider doesn’t always know that they’re there, and it is thinking about how those lines are managed and what that digital or IP enabled kit is going to look like.
Yeah. And I think, you know, I mean, coming to to your point, what happens, the last thing anyone wants to happen is for a service to to go down.
And if it goes down, obviously, you can contact your provider and it can get reinstated and and up, but, you know, it’s just about preparing yourself in advance, I think. And as Sarah said, you know, all of the different use cases that a, a simple telephone line has been put to over the last forty years is is amazing. So we’ve we’ve seen, lists that sort of seem to go on for several page as to different use cases. And also the the interesting thing is it’s not just, only small businesses that are affected It could be massive business. It could be big public sector organizations, and often the the larger the business, sometimes the more reliant they are on these these lines. So we’ve, we spent a lot of time as an industry, trying to work with utilities.
Who use, telephone lines for monitoring remote sites.
Telephone line, the old analog line was perfect for that because it comes with its own power supply.
And it can reach over long distances, and it’s so simple. That means it’s it’s really easy and low maintenance. So trying to replace that with a like for like solution to monitor, a remote electrical or remote water station can be quite a a challenge in itself, but I think that that’s also, you know, been the focus of a lot of work that tech UK’s done bringing, specialists together to show that there are solutions out there, and some of them are a slightly, yeah, a little bit off mainstream, but, definitely it’s it’s one that you need to have a think about loops back again to the contact us now point, which is, I think, as as an industry, that’s really the that that we want to, to put out there, you know, if you if you’ve you’ve got any questions, ask them before you need to get into sort of a a you’ve got to migrate by a set date conversation.
It was a real opportunity. I think for some of these digital solutions, and then some of these companies that are coming up with really creative ways of meeting the needs in in a better way than actually They’re being met at the moment of this old analogue legacy equipment and network.
