Full details of events across Northern Ireland to raise awareness of landline phone changes

This month, 30 events will be held across Northern Ireland to help raise awareness of upcoming changes to landlines.

BT will hold the events to talk to customers about how landlines will be changing over the coming years, with the change from analogue to digital landlines expected by the end of January 2027.

The company will be holding events throughout the month to visit communities across Northern Ireland, including those in rural locations. The events will include details of steps affected customers will need to take and the support available.

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Moving customers to digital phonelines – which, for most customers, will see calls made over a broadband line – is being prioritised urgently by telecoms providers as the 40-year-old analogue landline technology is becoming increasingly fragile.

Vicky Hicks, Senior Engagement Manager at BT, said: “We will be visiting Northern Ireland throughout October to speak to our customers face-to-face and answer any questions they may have about the essential upgrade from analogue to digital landlines.

“The landline is here to stay, and for the majority of customers, making the switch simply means plugging your phone into a broadband router instead of into a wall-mounted phone socket. This will bring new benefits like advanced spam call blocking. On average, we prevent 19,500 scam calls a day from reaching our customers.

“Thanks to upgrades to Northern Ireland’s broadband infrastructure, the vast majority of homes and businesses have access to superfast broadband and around 90% can now get ultrafast, full fibre broadband using the Openreach network. This means most of our customers won’t experience much of a difference in their service when they make the switch.”

Full details of BT landline events across Northern Ireland

BT recently announced an update to its timetable for moving all customers off the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and onto digital landlines by the end of January 2027, outlining a series of improvements to better protect vulnerable customers and those with additional needs, including telecare users.

It also confirmed that customers who identify as vulnerable, have additional needs or who use a telecare alarm system will not be switched until Spring 2025 at the earliest. This allows time for data sharing agreements with local authorities or telecare companies to be in place and in-home support for telecare users to become available.

The company also announced plans to offer a dedicated landline service for customers who don’t use broadband from the Autumn. This will allow customers to use their landline in the same way as they do today until a digital solution becomes available, or 2030, if that comes sooner.

BT is working with local authorities, the telecare industry and government bodies to ensure vulnerable customers are identified and can be supported with the necessary steps to make the upgrade in the future.

For more information visit: https://www.bt.com/digital-voice.

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