The end of ISDN 2, ISDN 30 and analogue telephone lines

Traditional telephony

The analogue technology used for simple telephone lines dates back to the 19th century and while the equipment used today bears little resemblance to the telephones used then, the basic principles of operation have remained largely unchanged. In the 1960s and 1970s, digital technology was introduced into the telephone network, giving improved reliability and speech quality, but the connection between the exchange and the telephone remained the same, still using techniques developed in the 19th century. During the 1980s, the digital technology in the telephone network was extended to the customer premises with the introduction of ISDN 2 and ISDN 30. Since then, we have had the internet revolution and although both the internet and the telephone network are completely digital, they operate on different principles, resulting in 2 different and incompatible digital networks being connected to many if not all business premises.

Internet-based telephone systems

The internet is rapidly replacing everything that came before it and that includes the telephone network. Products such as SIP trunks and Hosted VoIP deliver telephony over the internet and work anywhere where there is an internet connection available. Traditional telephone lines, both analogue and ISDN, are now being phased out.

Openreach's current plan is to phase out all ISDN 2 and ISDN 30 connections by 2025, this works is now in progress. All new orders for telephony should be for internet VoIP based telephone services, not for traditional telephony and definitely not for ISDN based services.

We are now actively migrating our customers to appropriate VoIP services, which are either SIP trunks or Hosted telephony.

Existing telephone systems

Most of the current telephone systems available now are designed to operate with both traditional telephone lines and internet-based SIP trunks. In addition, adapters are available that allow telephones and telephone systems designed for the old telephone network to work with the various internet-based telephony products. This means that while all telephone systems will have to be updated to work with internet-based telephony, there is currently plenty of time to do this. We have various options for updating or replacing traditional telephone systems with appropriate VoIP based products.

High-pressure sales tactics

The planned switch-off of all ISDN services is being used by some sales people to pressure companies into moving to new services before they really need to. For more information, please read our article Known telecoms-related scams.

If you want to know more about your telephone system and whether you need to upgrade it, please call us for advice.

Call us on 0115 938 9685 or use our contact form.