The digital switchover has been in process for years, but all should be complete for nearly everyone in the UK by the end of January 2027. That means if your business is currently using analogue telephony services, it will have switched over the digital by then.
As the saying goes, possession is nine-tenths of the law, so for most companies, whoever provides your analogue business telephone services now is likely to be the first to do so with digital services. Indeed, your company may already have been contacted by and made some arrangements with your provider in respect of the changeover.
In many cases, all will be well. The new services will be installed efficiently and with no glitches, while what follows will be much superior. Just as the government guide to the switchover highlights, you should enjoy a better service, with new features only available via Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and greater reliability.
You Can Switch If High Expectations Are Not Met
However, we have launched our business telecoms switching service because this hoped-for state of affairs won’t apply to everyone, every time. Many companies will be glad of the opportunity to switch telecoms provider when they find the digital services they get fall short of what is promised.
In considering how things might fail to meet the promised standard, it is worth looking at why the switchover is happening.
The government guide states that the current analogue system is getting old and worn out, having been in place for decades, and is now reaching the end of the road. And talking of roads, nobody wants to have to dig them up to lay a load more cables when there is an obvious, internet-based alternative now available.
As the current system ages, the guide notes, incidents leading to a loss of service have been on the rise. Ofcom recorded that there was a 20 per cent year-on-year increase in these between 2022 and 2023, with a 60 per cent rise in lost service hours.
The situation is exacerbated by a shortage of some parts as the makers stop manufacturing them in anticipation of the digital switchover.
Why Things Should Be Better
What this means is that you should immediately receive better service. The days of the phone lines being non-functional because of an ‘incident’ (whatever that may be) should be over, with your provider using modern and more reliable infrastructure, backed by abundantly available parts and equipment to produce a consistent service.
Indeed, the guidance stipulates that the new systems will be waterproof and therefore more resilient against incidents like floods and storms.
Needless to say, if this increase in reliability does not happen, you will have every reason to be disappointed, for the promised improvement will not have materialised. In such circumstances, you will have every reason to switch.
What If New Services Fall Short?
The second issue comes from the matter of the new services you should get. We have previously written about what you may expect from VoIP and where problems might arise with it, but there are other things that could go wrong if your service provider falls short in their operations.
Among the potential problems that can take the system down is a broadband or electricity outage. In the past, when phone lines were independent of the general electricity supply, you could still make landline calls even when the lights and TV had turned off.
Electricity outages won’t be the fault of your telephony supplier (unless their engineers make a massive blunder), but reliable broadband is something that comes within their remit, and if this is not forthcoming (which will affect all your other online facilities as well), this could be a very good reason to switch.
The Bottom Line
Of course, it could be that the switchover goes very smoothly for your firm, that you enjoy wonderfully clear calls, the VoIP functions well without any glitches, you take advantage of the new services like three-way calling, your security is better, the integration with the cloud works well and enables you to be more flexible and mobile.. and yet, still, there is a problem.
Quite apart from anything else, there is still the issue of price. This is, of course, a matter of all things being equal, for a cheaper but poorer service will not be a good investment. While better communications and reliability should translate into greater efficiency and therefore improve your firm’s bottom line, poor service will have the opposite effect.
However, if faced with a choice between two providers whose reputation for offering a high standard of service is equally high, you may find the tie-breaker is indeed price, and that by switching, you may get a better deal.
Whatever your reason for switching, our new service will make the whole process quick and simple.
