Digital Switchover & Phone Socket Rescue

Not on their own, no. Once the copper line is switched off, the socket on the wall has nothing feeding it — the dial tone now comes out of your router. The wiring in your walls is still perfectly good though, so in most houses I can feed the router's phone output back into the existing extensions and every socket works exactly as it did before.

Your provider will move your service over and will usually send you a router. What they won't do is come into your house and sort out your extension sockets, your cordless phones or your alarm — their responsibility ends at the master socket. Anything past that point is where I come in.

This one matters, so don't leave it. Older telecare alarms, pendants and monitored burglar alarms were built for the copper line and a lot of them won't work reliably over digital. Tell your alarm provider you're being switched — most will supply a digital-ready unit free of charge. I'll always check for one of these and tell you what I find.

It's a fair question and worth knowing about. The old copper line was powered from the exchange, so it kept working in a power cut. A digital line runs off your router, so it doesn't. If anyone in the house depends on the phone in an emergency, providers have to offer a battery backup unit free of charge — ask them for one, and keep a mobile charged.

Almost always yes. Corded and cordless phones plug straight into the phone socket on the back of most routers, and older phones work fine. If you've got a much-loved phone I'll test it on the day and tell you honestly if it's had its time.

Yes, and I'd rather you did. Plenty of exchanges are being switched over well ahead of January 2027, and the last few months will be busy for everyone in this trade. If you've had a letter, that's the time to ring.