Openreach warns 35,000 customers in Northern Ireland are yet to migrate off the copper network

16 October 2026. Northern Ireland was supposed to be the easy part of the PSTN switch-off. Full-fibre coverage there sits at 97% — ahead of the 85% UK average — yet Openreach has warned that 35,000 of its customers in Northern Ireland have still not migrated off the old copper network, including some legacy broadband lines. With the final switch-off due on 31 January 2027 — 107 days away — a holdout list that size in the best-connected region is a flag for every part of the UK where the same pattern is playing out more slowly.

The numbers behind the warning

The UK-wide picture Openreach has been publishing all year is 1.2 million lines still to migrate, including around 350,000 business premises, out of roughly 15 million already moved. Northern Ireland's 35,000 is a pointed slice of that, because the infrastructure to move everyone is already there. Openreach NI Director Lauren McGaughey made the point that matters most for small firms: the line you think of as "just a phone" is often quietly carrying something else — alarms, payment terminals, lift phones, CCTV — and analogue-dependent kit fails when the network does. Her advice: check now, speak to your provider and equipment maintainer. Customers who miss the boat will not be cut off outright — a last-resort Emergency Voice Access (eVAC) service keeps basic calls alive where technically possible — but eVAC lacks features and costs more, and is not a place any business should plan to live.

Why the last 35,000 are the hardest

The holdouts are rarely undecided — they are unreachable or blocked: telecare users needing engineered solutions, unresponsive customers who have ignored every letter, premises where a legacy line quietly anchors an unaudited device. Those categories exist in every UK region, which is why a warning aimed at Northern Ireland reads as a template for the final 107 days everywhere. The clock is also running on the paperwork: WLR3 exception orders close on 30 October, 14 days from today, and letters of authority for novations and transfers must be in by 6 November. After those dates the routes out of copper narrow sharply ahead of the network's closure.

What businesses elsewhere should take from it

First, audit the line: list everything plugged into it, because the forgotten device is the one that fails silently. Second, move anything that dials out over an analogue line onto a route that survives the switch-off — alarm signalling over IP with OpenTAP keeps TAP-style panel alerts flowing without a phone line. Third, give inbound calls a landing place that is not tied to any socket: a virtual phone number answered over SIP reaches mobiles and desk phones wherever staff are, with plans from free pay-as-you-go to £9.97 a month. The full countdown is tracked in our PSTN switch-off guide.

Related: 112 more exchanges enter copper stop-sell — 16.4m premises now inside the fence · The last easy copper orders die on 30 October