The PSTN switch-off is coming - is your city ready?
Openreach has published its own league table showing exactly how much work is left before the UK's old copper phone network shuts down for good.
Some cities are almost there.
Others, London included, still have a long way to go.
Here's what the table actually shows, what the January 2027 deadline means in practice, and what your business needs to check before then.
What is the PSTN switch-off, and when does it happen?
PSTN stands for Public Switched Telephone Network - the old analogue copper phone system that's underpinned UK landlines and business phone lines for decades.
Openreach is retiring it entirely, with a hard deadline of 31 January 2027.
After that date, any device or system still running on the old network simply stops working. Openreach has been consistent that the deadline is fixed and not being pushed back again - it was already delayed once, largely to give time for telecare systems used by elderly and disabled residents to be made compatible with the new network first.
What does Openreach's city league table actually show?
On 17 September 2026, Openreach published a ranking of the ten UK cities with the most copper lines still needing migration, measured as a percentage of lines remaining in each area.
| Rank | City | Lines remaining | % remaining |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 42,351 | 6.35% |
| 2 | Manchester | 55,961 | 7.35% |
| 3 | Sheffield | 51,870 | 7.55% |
| 4 | Cardiff | 37,959 | 8.35% |
| 5 | Leeds | 62,411 | 8.62% |
| 6 | Edinburgh | 39,132 | 8.82% |
| 7 | Bristol | 43,775 | 8.99% |
| 8 | Birmingham | 37,825 | 9.08% |
| 9 | Glasgow | 30,653 | 10.60% |
| 10 | London | 235,934 | 12.92% |
Source: Openreach, published 17 September 2026.
Liverpool leads the way, with under 6.5% of lines still to migrate. London sits at the bottom of the ten, with nearly 236,000 lines still outstanding - by far the largest raw number on the list, given the size of the city.
Across all ten cities, over 90% of lines have already made the switch.
The gap left is real, but it's a shrinking one - and every business still sitting in that remaining percentage is running against a fixed deadline.
How many businesses are actually affected?
Nationally, Openreach reports around 1.5 million copper-based lines still remaining, of which roughly 350,000 are business lines. That's not a small tail end - it's a substantial number of UK businesses still exposed if nothing changes before January 2027.
James Lilley, Openreach's Director of All-IP, put it plainly: businesses that wait risk leaving customers exposed to avoidable service disruption, with real consequences - lost revenue, operational difficulties, and a worse customer experience.
What happens if a business doesn't migrate in time?
Two things, and they start well before the deadline itself:
It gets more expensive first. Wholesale line rental pricing is set to double from October 2026, months ahead of the actual switch-off - businesses still on legacy lines start paying a premium for a service on its way out.
Then it simply stops working. Unlike residential lines, which get some temporary emergency-access protection, business lines don't get that same safety net. Once the switch happens, anything still running on the old network disconnects.
What's actually at risk beyond the office phone?
This is the part most businesses underestimate.
PSTN lines don't just carry phone calls - they quietly sit behind a lot of equipment that was installed once and never thought about again;
Lift alarm lines and building intercoms
Fire panels and burglar alarm systems
Door entry and access control systems
Card payment terminals
CCTV backhaul connections
Industrial telemetry and energy management systems
Most of these are managed completely separately from the office phone contract, which is exactly why they get missed. Nobody's thinking about the lift alarm when they're planning a phone system upgrade.
What should you actually check before January 2027?
Audit every device connected to a phone line — not just handsets, but alarms, lifts, payment terminals and anything else that might be quietly using an old line
Check which lines are on Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) — that's the specific product being retired, and it's worth confirming directly rather than assuming
Work out a migration route for each service type, since a lift alarm and an office phone system don't necessarily move to the same replacement
How RefynIT can help
The office phone side of this is the part we can actually fix directly.
Once you've identified what's running on old copper lines, moving your business onto proper business broadband is the straightforward part of the switch-off - a modern, reliable connection built for how your business actually works today, not a legacy network on its way out.
The other systems on our checklist above - alarms, lifts, payment terminals, CCTV - they will each need their own provider's input, since they're outside what an IT and connectivity provider manages directly. But getting your core broadband and phone lines sorted early is the one piece you can tackle right now, without waiting on anyone else.
Explore your options and see what a proper broadband setup looks like before the deadline hits.
