BT is switching off analogue between January 2026 and January 2027. To avoid the risk of service loss, all critical and analogue lines should be migrated from the existing Chorus telephony service to an alternative solution by the end of 2025.
What are critical and analogue lines?
- critical lines are telephone lines that serve critical services, such as lift phones, alarm lines, and backup lines for college lodges. They can be used for inbound and outbound phone calls and will continue to work in the event of power outages or disruption to the Chorus phone system. They use dedicated copper wiring and network infrastructure, and have a Service Level Agreement (SLA) which means that outages should be responded to by our suppliers within 4 hours
- analogue lines are like critical lines and use the same network infrastructure. The difference is that they usually provide telephony to a legacy device which cannot be digital, and that service is not critical to life or business operations
What does this mean for my college or department?
The table below outlines the options available for replacement of analogue telephony lines. If you need further guidance on these or about how to mitigate for different service outages, please contact the project team.
Existing line
|
Solution |
Analogue lift line |
Via one of these options:
- moving to GSM through the Estates maintenance and modernisation contract
- by individual colleges moving to GSM
|
Analogue line (non-lift) that can move to Teams Phone without a handset |
Move to Call Queue in Teams Phone |
Analogue line (non-lift) in safety-critical location that can move to Teams Phone and requires handset (definition of safety-critical to be confirmed) |
Poly handsets on Teams Phone |
Analogue line (non-lift) that cannot be moved to handset e.g. alarm lines, electric meter lines, fax lines |
Analogue Telephone Adaptor (ATA) to enable move to Teams Phone |
Other analogue lines that cannot be moved to Teams Phone |
Upgrade analogue line associated equipment that is incompatible with new technology (e.g. an ageing alarm system) |
Critical and analogue lines not provided via Chorus
- You will also need to review any analogue services that are not provided via Chorus. This includes directly provided lines, which will not be covered by the Telephony Replacement project but will also need to be removed or replaced
- We hold some records for directly provided BT lines and will provide support and advice where possible
Detailed information