Virgin Media 02 has completed its first trial supporting telecare users as their services are migrated over to digital voice services ahead of the PSTN switch-off deadline in January 2027.
As telecommunications providers, including Virgin Media 02, meet with the Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms, Chris Bryant, to discuss the migration and update him in the work they have been doing to help vulnerable customers, Gareth Lister, director of customer products at Virgin Media 02, said in a blog that the company had concluded the 10-week trial with the TSA, the industry body for technology enabled care.
Work with Stockport-based telecare provider Carecall to provide dedicated support to telecare users as their services are migrated, Lister said that a data sharing agreement was established so telecare customers could be better identified, with both parties combining resources to communicate and engage with customers, and arranging joint visits to support customer and check all devices were working as they should.
Lister said, “It meant that we were able to commit to never leaving a property without a working landline while we migrated telecare device users and provided customers with the help they need as the essential digital switchover takes place.
“The trial was a phenomenal success, with 90 per cent of customers agreeing to migration appointments and almost all (96 per cent) being migrated successfully.
“Importantly, of the 191 customers identified through the data share, 31 had not previously been identified by Virgin Media O2 as telecare users. This is despite a review of all call records from Carecall’s alarm receiving centre (ARC).”
Carecall’s analysis showed that these customers were all using digital SIM-based telecare devices (operating independently from Virgin Media O2’s telephony service), which explains why no ARC call records were detected.
Lister added, “Together, we learnt a lot about how we can best support telecare customers to engage with the essential migration and illustrated what can be achieved in partnership.
“We’re now looking to carry out further trials in other parts of the country as we work towards creating a scaled and replicable model.
“To support that, we’ve recently run a series of workshops with local authorities and telecare alarm providers – attended by around 40 organisations from across the country - where we’ve shared our learnings and sought views on how this approach could be adapted for them.”
Over the autumn, Lister said that Virgin Media 02 had also written again to every local authority for the areas where it operates in, encouraging others to follow in Stockport Homes’ footsteps and establish data-sharing agreements where they haven’t done so already.
While some local authorities are keen to collaborate, Lister said it’s still the case that more than one hundred local authorities that were written to haven’t yet formed a data agreement with Virgin Media O2, with many not responding to communications at all.
He said, “As the old telephone network becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, the need to act is growing more urgent by the day.
“We’ve long argued we can’t do this alone and the Stockport trial powerfully demonstrates the importance of establishing data sharing agreements to identify vulnerable individuals not known to us. That’s why we are again, reiterating our call on government to create a ‘telecare charter’, which should clearly set out a range of commitments for the telecare sector and local authorities which requires them to work with our industry to ensure nobody is left behind.”