100 days to go, and Ofcom's latest data shows the copper exit is running at pace

23 October 2026. Today marks 100 days until the UK's copper phone network closes on 31 January 2027 — and the latest official numbers show the migration is happening at real pace. Ofcom's Q2 2026 Telecommunications Market Data Update, released on 14 October, records the total stock of UK fixed voice lines — PSTN lines, ISDN channels and managed VoIP connections counted together — falling by 522,000 (2.5%) during the quarter, to 20.2 million. Fixed voice revenues dropped to £874.2m, down 16.1% year on year.

Two quarters of accelerating decline

The quarterly declines are stacking up: 757,000 lines lost in Q1, 522,000 in Q2 — over a million lines in six months — on top of a 16.1% annual fall in voice revenue. Call volumes are falling even faster: fixed-originated traffic dropped 590 million minutes (16.3%) year on year to 3.02 billion, and mobile-originated calls to landlines slid another 5.9%. Every trend points the same way: the analogue line rental is being abandoned or replaced, quarter after quarter, with or without a headline announcement.

What the aggregate hides

Ofcom's line count bundles the living and the dying: managed VoIP connections keep growing inside the total while PSTN lines and ISDN channels drain out of it. Openreach's own programme figures say around 1.2 million lines still had to migrate this autumn, including roughly 350,000 business premises — so the next full quarter before the switch-off will show how much of that gap closes voluntarily. For the lines that remain, the routes out narrow first: WLR3 exception orders close on 30 October, letters of authority for transfers were due by 6 November, and after that only the standard migration path remains — with some providers already withdrawing copper early.

The 100-day checklist

If a business line is still on copper, the sequence is now urgent. Audit everything plugged into the line — phones, alarms, payment terminals, lift phones. Move anything that dials out onto an IP route: alarm signalling over IP with OpenTAP keeps TAP-style panel alerts flowing after the PSTN goes. Then port the number itself — a UK virtual number keeps every inbound call answering over SIP on mobiles and desk phones, with plans from free pay-as-you-go to £9.97 a month. Ofcom's Q2 numbers say the market has already decided; the last 100 days are about making sure no business line is still waiting on a decision it can make today. The full timeline is in our PSTN switch-off guide.

Related: Fixed voice lines fall to 20.7 million — Q1 data · Openreach warns 35,000 NI customers are yet to migrate