BT stands accused of bullying customers into a digital landline upgrade by temporarily cutting off their broadband. The claims have surfaced as providers race to switch households over before the January deadline.

Broadband pauses and bullying claims

Dennis Reed, founder of the campaign group Silver Voices, said he is receiving growing evidence of bullying behaviour aimed at forcing people to switch over.

Reed said he has heard of BT broadband customers who were not proactive or cooperative over a switch date being threatened with the loss of their internet. Because targets have to be met, he is fearful a lot of people will fall through the cracks.

The pause, the outcome and BT's response

BT is understood to have recently paused broadband for a small group of customers who had not responded to any communication about the copper landline switchover for two years. Each was given five days' notice of the planned outage to encourage them to contact BT and avoid the pause.

• •Landline connections and mobile services kept running throughout, so devices such as telecare alarms stayed operational.
• •More than 80% of the previously unresponsive customers are understood to have since taken the steps needed to switch.

A BT spokesperson said the company has been raising awareness of the switchover throughout the transformation, supported by local events, advertising campaigns, partners and direct customer communications. Those yet to move are a small minority who have not responded to repeated communications, the spokesperson said, and the temporary pause for this group is intended to help prevent a complete loss of service when the old analogue network is retired.

Where the switchover stands

The BT digital landline switchover is described as the biggest technological upgrade since the early 00s, when analogue TV was switched off. Telecoms companies have so far moved 16-17m lines from the old copper network to digital voice over internet protocol (VoIP), which runs on a broadband connection.

• •The network approaching retirement is the old public switched telephone network (PSTN).
• •Openreach, the BT subsidiary that maintains the vast majority of the UK broadband and telephony network, says about 1.3m copper-based landlines are still to be migrated.
• •The industry moved the copper landline retirement date from December last year to the end of January 2027.
• •Most households complete the switch by plugging their existing phone handset into the back of the broadband router instead of the wall socket.

Direct customer communications and years of awareness campaigns, in BT's case featuring the personalities Moira Stuart and Clare Balding, failed to get some customers to engage with the migration programme.

Concerns for vulnerable customers

Campaigners fear the 1.3m households still on copper lines include vulnerable individuals, such as elderly people with only a landline and no internet.

• •People in rural areas with patchy or no broadband and variable mobile coverage worry about calling the emergency services in a power cut.
• •Around 2 million people rely on telecare services, most often a personal pendant alarm or button, devices that traditionally depended on copper landlines unaffected by an internet outage.
• •Virgin Media was fined £23.8m in December for leaving thousands of customers, typically older and disabled people, without access to their alarms during its 2023 migration.
• •The worries around vulnerable customers previously led to a pause of non-voluntary migrations to digital landlines.

Caroline Abrahams, the charity director at Age UK, said telecoms providers should commit to ensuring no older person is cut off if they have not yet switched as the January 2027 deadline approaches. Older people, she noted, are overrepresented among those yet to move. On the deadline itself, she said:

About 1.3m copper-based landlines remain to be migrated before the network retires at the end of January 2027, and BT's message to customers is to act when contacted or risk losing their services.