350,000 business premises are still running on copper — 129 days before it stops

24 September 2026. The last full quarter before the UK's PSTN switch-off opens with a stubborn number: 1.5 million phone lines are still running on legacy copper, and roughly 350,000 of them sit in business premises, on Openreach's last published count. There are 129 days until the network closes on 31 January 2027 — and businesses, unlike households, have no official safety net if they miss it.

The pace doesn't add up

In February, Openreach counted "more than half a million" business lines yet to migrate; by the end of July the figure was roughly 350,000. That is a fall of about 150,000 in five and a half months — call it 27,000 a month. Roughly four months now remain, so even if the pace held, more than 200,000 business premises would still be on copper when the network closes. Openreach has been blunt that "there is no extension to the deadline", and February's data showed the specialist hardware sharing the ride: more than 12,000 lift lines, around 500 CCTV lines, plus payment terminals, door entry and fax.

No safety net for business lines

Consumers get protections: a temporary Emergency Voice Access (eVAC) arrangement for household lines that fail to migrate, and a regulator that spent 2026 tightening provider obligations — most recently closing a remediation case over BT's handling of telecare customers during migration. Business lines get none of that. When the network closes, an un-migrated business line simply stops — taking any attached kit with it. The bottleneck now is capacity, not willingness: engineers, porting windows and alarm-panel reprogramming all queue up as January gets closer.

Keep the number, lose the copper

For most inbound business lines the asset worth saving is the number, not the rental. Porting it to a virtual number service moves calls onto IP — answered on mobiles or on a SIP desk phone or softphone, with call forwarding, voicemail-to-email and business-hours routing included, from free pay-as-you-go to a £9.97-a-month plan. The rental then ends on your schedule, not the network's. Alarm and CCTV signalling is the exception that needs a managed IP route rather than a simple port — see the Redcare closure and the TAP-to-SMS guide.

Related: The PSTN switch-off guide · First exchange closures land on 30 October