Switching from analogue to telephony: Listening to the needs of landline consumers (2022)
Communications consumers deserve high quality, affordable, reliable and secure services – this is now as important as the right to access utilities. The current UK traditional telephone network – the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is reaching the end of its life and needs to be upgraded. Broadly, by the end of 2025, consumers currently using a traditional landline will be migrated over to using landline telephones over Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.
Our previous research on people's awareness and perceptions of the switchover to VoIP
In 2021, we commissioned in-depth, qualitative research with residential and business audiences across the UK to understand awareness and perceptions of the switchover to VoIP, the confidence of customers to carry out the switchover and their ability to identify what type of additional support may be needed. We also wanted to explore the potential impact of the switchover if mitigations were not put in place – such as care alarms ceasing to work, phone extensions not functioning, consumers spending money on telephone equipment that had become obsolete, and people being unable to make emergency calls on their landline during a power cut.
“The landline is almost like the ‘old faithful’ in my life… Mobiles aren’t always the most reliable. It’s always been there and it connects my other systems [care alarm] so it makes a big difference to me” -
The research highlighted that while the majority of participants in the research accepted the need for the switchover, there were questions that they felt needed answering.
Our recent research on consumers' telephony needs
To build our knowledge base in this vital area and look more deeply into the issues we found in our qualitative research, we have commissioned this extensive survey of 4612 consumers around the UK.
We hope that our recommendations and the findings from the research will assist policy makers and industry to invest in timely action to make migration to VoIP a success for UK consumers and small businesses – and provide the information needed by industry to enable providers to navigate away from avoidable risks.
Reports and data tables:
CCP ACOD Migration to VoIP - Listening to the needs of landline consumers (PDF version)
CCP ACOD Migration to VoIP - Listening to the needs of landline consumers (Word version)