Public Switched Telephone Network switch off

What’s happening?

Currently many telephony services are provided via the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) but the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have announced that these “legacy” services will stop being provided across the UK after December 2025. NHSE have initiated a project to ensure that all NHS organisations in England, are aware of these changes and have made alternative provision for these services by the time these services are deprecated. 

Whilst the time frame for the national switch off is still a few years away, many telephone exchanges will stop selling new services well before this time, and some will retire this service much earlier. 

The reasoning behind deprecating these services is that much of the infrastructure that provides them is old, no longer supported by the original manufacturer and is in need of replacement. 

Main impacts of change

PABX replacement/upgrade 

There are two separate issues that need to be addressed; the first is relatively straight forward (from a technical perspective) and relates to the need to replace legacy/upgrade legacy PABX systems with IP-based rather than PSTN (ISDN) connectivity.  

The major impact of this to the NHS will be the cost and any disruption caused to services (especially clinical services) during the upgrade/replacement process. 

Services requiring power over the line 

A number of systems including health monitors, building management systems, cardiac arrest phones, secure phones (Brent phones) and other connections such as lift phones, make use of one of great benefits of the PSTN network – that of providing power as well as voice/data over the line. Technically this is more problematic as currently there is no like for like replacement for this technology, and so provides much more of a technical challenge.

Work being undertaken 

NHS England is currently engaging with us as well as DCMS, BT, NHSE Estates, NHS Digital and local CSU’s to get a clearer view as to the scale of the challenge facing the NHS. To this end NHS England have:  

1. Engaged BT (primary supplier of these services to the NHS) to provide details of the current estate.
2. Engaged with other telephony suppliers including Virgin Media and Telefonica to understand the current position of their NHS PSTN service users and any plans to migrate.
3. Engaged with a number of CSU’s to provide technical support for a number of Advanced Telephony Projects to enable GP practices to implement IP-based telephony.
4. Engaged with BT and BT Open Reach to investigate replacement solutions for devices that currently receive power over the line.
5. Engaged with DCMS on their roundtable events to ensure they are aware of the specific challenge faced by the NHS of these changes. 
6. Ensured relative parties (NHSD and NHSE) are kept informed as to the progress of this project.