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The digital switch-off: Is your school fit to switch?

Facilities Whole-school issues
The UK’s analogue legacy phone network is soon to be switched off, meaning systems in your school could stop working. The digital switch-off will affect everyone and everything. We look at what schools need to know
Image: Adobe Stock

First the good news: Britain is heading full-speed towards a world-class digitally interconnected future where all telecommunications and data transactions take place over reliable high speed fibre optics.

Now the bad news: your existing call-handling, automated key-holder alerts, fire alarms and remote back-office support services will probably stop working as a result.

That’s because the UK’s existing analogue legacy phone network will be switched off by January 31, 2027, and replaced with a fully digital network that uses Internet protocol (IP) technology across a fibre-based service.

That means every phone line in the country will become digital, routing calls over IP rather than the traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). Therefore, any remaining critical services that aren’t switched to the new network will be lost.

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