Alertacall - Digital Switchover 2025

How will telephone lines work after the Digital Switchover? By December 2025, VoIP technology will be enabled on every telephone line in the country. VoIP stands for ‘Voice over Internet Protocol’ but is sometimes referred to as internet telephony, IP telephony or broadband telephony. VoIP technology converts your voice into digital signals or ‘network packets’ instead of simplistic electrical pulses. The internet uses technologies that take sounds, images, videos, words, or anything that contains information, e.g. a file on a computer, and breaks that down into thousands, or millions of tiny electronic packages called network packets or simply ‘packets’ for short. Every device connected to the internet, including computers, smartphones, TVs, internet enabled doorbells etc. gets allocated a unique address. Packets can be sent to and from these IP addresses where they are quickly reassembled in order. Telecoms companies will be writing to advise customers of when they will be undertaking this work in their area. The telecoms company will then switch off and eventually remove the old equipment that is used to handle the traditional telephone calls. Importantly, after the Digital Switchover most existing landline telephone devices will continue to work as normal: • Existing telephone devices will plug directly into the back of a new style of broadband router that will be supplied to everyone who does not have one already. • If a property already has a broadband router, then a special adapter may be provided. Digital Switchover is starting to be rolled out now BT first announced that analogue telephony would be phased out in 2015. While it will be completely switched off by 2025, the Digital Switchover will begin in some parts of the country sooner. Therefore, it is vital that organisations that have not yet put things in place must begin preparing for the change and look at what services and properties will be affected. After Digital Switchover All calls will be delivered using packets over an internet connection 5 Digital Switchover 2025