Last week, BT confirmed that the initial deadline of the end of 2025 would be pushed back to January 2027.
The move will give the telecoms industry more time to address various challenges, including its impact on old and vulnerable customers.
Dennis Reed, director at Silver Voices, said that the decision to move the deadline back has only caused more confusion. He said that BT needed to make a clear statement about what is happening with the non-voluntary mass migrations which were paused in December 2023 after several incidents where telecare devices stopped working.
He added that this was critical now given the “vacuum” created by the general election called this week by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for 4th July and, therefore, the absence of political scrutiny.
“Following the BT announcement, people have been left in a state of even more confusion about where they stand than before,” said Reed. “Although the delay is obviously welcome, there now appears to be an intent to start the mass migration and it's still unclear what protections will be in place for old and vulnerable people.
“BT has talked about hybrid phones and batteries with a longer shelf life, but it isn't clear when these products will become available in the kind of quantities required to meet the need for these customers. It’s also unclear whether old and vulnerable people will have to pay for them or not or when forced migrations will be resumed.
“Added to that, it’s unclear how BT is going to give vulnerable customers the opportunity to identify themselves as such in order to receive this provision. Currently, they're doing it by default by waiting for them to contact them before they put these measures in place.
“So, there are still a whole load of questions that remain unanswered and that's particularly worrying given the political vacuum we're now going to be entering in the run-up to the general election. The worry is that industry may take the opportunity to force the migrations through without any political oversight.”
Reed, whose organisation initially called for the deadline to be pushed back five years, said that the extended timeframe for implementation won't make much difference in the scheme of things.
“It was an unrealistic timeframe to start with and still is," said Reed. "They should have just bit the bullet and extended the deadline even further so that they can make sure all old and vulnerable customers are properly protected.”
But first of all, Reed said that all the old and vulnerable customers need to be identified. Then, he said that there needs to be an agreement between the government and industry about the exact protections afforded to them.
“Everything is too vague at the moment,” said Reed. “So, we are going to put all of these unanswered questions to the senior civil servants responsible for liaising with industry on this matter and try to get some proper answers.”
Ann Donkin, interim chief executive of Age UK Norfolk, said that the extended deadline will reduce people's anxiety about the new technology and whether it will work for their needs.
“Here in Norfolk, the resilience solutions in the event of the digital system failure because of a power outage need to be stress-tested. For example, many areas are poorly served in terms of a mobile signal, and an older person living alone with Dementia may well not understand what to do with the battery pack back-up solution,” said Donkin. “I live in an area where I have to use WhatsApp for calls using a mobile device as the signal is so poor.”
In November 2017, BT announced that it was going to retire its analogue telephone networks as part of an industry-wide upgrade of landline services to new digital technology using an internet connection. It was said the new digital phone lines would allow clearer and better quality phone calls.
But there are concerns that digital landlines will not work in a power cut, resulting in fears older or vulnerable people could be isolated, particularly if they rely on care alarms which use traditional phone connections.
Donkin said that moving forward the government, Ofcom and industry need to work together to manage the change process. She also called for all parties to use non-technical language as far as possible to communicate these changes.
BT plans to continue its rollout of digital phone lines for standard customers this summer. In spring 2025, the firm plans to contact customers who consider themselves to be vulnerable about the switch, in areas where support for telecare users is available.
In a statement, Howard Watson, the chief security and networks officer at BT Group, said, “The urgency for switching customers onto digital services grows by the day because the 40-year-old analogue landline technology is increasingly fragile.
“Our priority remains doing this safely and the work we’re doing with our peers, local authorities, telecare providers and key government organisations is key.”