BT pauses broadband to push its last copper-line holdouts onto digital voice

On the two published counts, about 93% of the old copper lines have already moved and roughly 7% remain ^[1]. Providers have migrated 16-17m lines to digital voice so far ^[2]. Openreach, the BT subsidiary that maintains most of the UK network, says about 1.3m copper landlines are still to go ^[3]. Those are the customers that years of letters and awareness campaigns, in BT's case fronted by Moira Stuart and Clare Balding, did not move ^[4].

BT's response to that group was narrow by design. According to the Guardian, which did not name its source, the customers whose broadband was paused had not answered any switchover contact for two years ^[1]. They got five days' notice ^[5]. Their landline and mobile service stayed on, so telecare devices kept working ^[6]. More than 80% of them then took the steps needed to switch ^[7]. A BT spokesperson described them as "a small minority" who "haven't responded to repeated communications about the change" ^[19], and said the pause "is intended to help prevent a complete loss of service when the old, analogue network is retired" ^[8].

Dennis Reed, founder of the campaign group Silver Voices, said: "I'm getting increasing evidence that there is some bullying behaviour going on in order to try to force people to switch over" ^[9]. "I am also fearful that, because targets have to be met, a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks," he said ^[10]. BT's design answers part of the first charge: cutting broadband while leaving voice live costs the customer convenience and leaves the alarm line alone. The second is harder to answer. A broadband pause reaches only customers who have broadband ^[1]. Campaigners say the 1.3m include elderly people with a landline and no internet, and rural households with patchy or no broadband and variable mobile coverage who worry about calling emergency services in a power cut ^[11].

Providers also pay when they get the vulnerable cases wrong. Virgin Media was fined £23.8m in December for leaving thousands of customers, typically older and disabled people, without access to their alarms during its 2023 migrations ^[12]. Around 2 million people use telecare, mostly pendant alarms or buttons that have traditionally relied on copper lines ^[13]. Concern over vulnerable customers already forced a pause in non-voluntary migrations and pushed the retirement date back by about 13 months, from December 2025 to the end of January 2027 ^[14][2].

The Guardian's report covers households and does not break out lines held by businesses or other organisations. The trade-off for any line-holder still on copper is the same, though, and it is about control over timing. For most customers the switch means plugging the existing handset into the broadband router ^[15]. The risk sits in the exceptions: alarms, lines in places where broadband is weak, and phones that must work in a power cut ^[11][13]. Moving this quarter lets the line-holder pick the date and test those exceptions. Waiting until the programme's last weeks hands the date to a provider already ramping up pressure to hit its deadline ^[20], with tools that now include a broadband pause ^[1].

Whether the end-January date holds is not settled, and we do not know yet whether it will move a second time. BT's spokesperson said failing to act "could result in the loss of their services when the outdated network retires" ^[18]. Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said providers "should commit to ensuring that no older person is cut off if they haven't yet switched" and that the deadline "should not mark a hard-and-fast cliff edge" ^[16]. "We know that older people are overrepresented among those who are yet to switch," she said ^[17].