PSTN Switch-Off Statistics: The UK's Analogue Countdown in Numbers
Every verified figure on the retirement of the UK's analogue phone network — lines remaining, migration pace, telecare exposure and the hard deadline of 31 January 2027 — with named sources throughout. Compiled July 2026, updated as new Ofcom and Openreach data lands.
The Switch-Off in Five Numbers
Compiled from Openreach, Ofcom and UK Government publications — each figure sourced in the body below.
BT Group retires the PSTN — every remaining analogue line and ISDN circuit stops working (Openreach).
Down from 5.2 million a year earlier — migration is accelerating but a large tail remains (Ofcom).
PSTN connections now account for roughly a fifth of residential landline connections (Ofcom Connected Nations 2025).
Personal alarms and monitoring devices that must be verified digital-compatible before any line is migrated (UK Government).
Openreach's national stop-sell — no new PSTN-based products have been available since (Openreach).
Residential PSTN landline customers remaining (millions)
The retirement of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is the largest change to UK telecoms infrastructure in decades, and it has a hard finish line: 31 January 2027, the date BT Group has set for withdrawing the analogue network entirely (Openreach — upgrading the UK to digital phone lines). This page collects the verified numbers in one place. Every figure carries its source, and the page is updated as new Ofcom and Openreach data is published — cite it freely with attribution.
How fast is the migration actually going?
Faster than it was — but with a substantial tail. Ofcom's tracking shows residential PSTN landline customers fell from 5.2 million in July 2024 to 3.2 million in July 2025, a reduction of two million customers in a year. By July 2025, PSTN connections accounted for roughly a fifth of all residential landline connections, and around one million households dropped their landline entirely in favour of broadband-only service in that year (Ofcom Connected Nations 2025).
The direction was set earlier: Openreach stopped selling new analogue services nationally in September 2023, having reported just under 10 million lines still to convert when it set out the retirement plan, with more than 500 exchange areas covering some 4.6 million premises already in the stop-sell phase at that point (Openreach, 2023).
The telecare exposure
The most sensitive number in the programme: around 1.8 million UK households use telecare — personal alarms and monitoring devices, many of which were designed for analogue lines. Under the Government's PSTN Charter, signed by the major providers, no telecare user should be migrated until their device is confirmed compatible with a digital line, and the Department of Health and Social Care's Telecare National Action Plan sets out the safeguarding steps in detail (UK Government — Telecare National Action Plan).
For businesses the equivalent exposure is operational: intruder alarm signalling, lift emergency phones, door entry systems and older card terminals all commonly dial out over analogue lines. None of them survives the switch-off unconverted — our PSTN switch-off guide covers the migration path for each.
What this means for UK businesses
Three practical conclusions fall out of the numbers. First, the deadline does not move with demand — the original 2025 date was extended once to give the industry time, and 31 January 2027 is now the planning assumption every provider works to. Second, the tail is where the risk concentrates: the organisations still on analogue lines in the final year are disproportionately those with the most complex dependencies — multiple sites, alarm and lift lines, payment devices. Third, capacity tightens as the deadline nears: migration engineering is a finite resource, and the closer to the date a business starts, the less scheduling control it has.
The commercial migration path is well established: cloud telephony from business VoIP providers (AMVIA's published tiers start at £5.95/user/month against a UK market norm of £12–£20), carried over full-fibre broadband or a dedicated leased line, with analogue-dependent devices replaced or converted during the same project. A business can establish its exposure in about sixty seconds with our free readiness check.
How to cite this data
Cite as: AMVIA, PSTN Switch-Off Statistics, July 2026 — amvia.co.uk/research/pstn-switch-off-statistics. Primary figures belong to their named sources (Openreach, Ofcom, UK Government) and should be attributed to them; this page's contribution is the compilation, the business analysis and the migration-market pricing context. Journalists are welcome to reproduce the summary numbers with attribution; for comment on the business migration wave, contact AMVIA on 0333 733 8050.
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Related Resources
PSTN Switch-Off Readiness Check
Five questions, sixty seconds — your business's exposure, then an instant VoIP price.
PSTN Switch-Off Guide
What is changing, who is affected, and how to migrate without disruption.
Business VoIP
The migration destination — published tiers from £5.95/user/month.
SoGEA Broadband
Broadband without a phone line — the switch-off-ready option for FTTC areas.
PSTN statistics questions
Ofcom's most recent tracking put residential PSTN landline customers at 3.2 million in July 2025, down from 5.2 million a year earlier — about a fifth of residential landline connections. Business lines, ISDN circuits and the analogue lines behind alarms, lifts and card terminals sit on top of that figure, which is why business exposure is best established per site rather than inferred from national numbers.
Plan as if it won't. The original end-2025 date was extended once, to 31 January 2027, explicitly to give the industry and vulnerable users more migration time — and the industry has organised around that date since. No new analogue services have been sold since September 2023, so the network is already closed to growth; the remaining question is only when each line migrates, not whether.
Around 1.8 million UK households use telecare devices — personal alarms and monitoring systems, many built for analogue lines. Under the Government's PSTN Charter, providers have committed not to migrate a telecare user until the device is confirmed to work on a digital line, and the Telecare National Action Plan coordinates the safeguarding work between government, councils and providers.
Three primary sources: Openreach (the switch-off date, the September 2023 stop-sell, and the scale of lines to convert), Ofcom (the migration-pace figures, most recently Connected Nations 2025), and UK Government publications (the telecare figures and the PSTN Charter). Each figure on this page is attributed inline, and the page is updated as those sources publish new data.