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In 2015, BT announced that they will be switching off the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) in 2025, marking the biggest change in the telecoms industry for over 30 years, but what does this mean for businesses?

The move ends the use of analogue phone lines and moves communications technology into an entirely online space.  Businesses will no longer have the ability to acquire ISDN and PSTN after September 2023 and the total switch off occurring in 2025.

Over the last 10+ years telecom companies have built modern internet protocol (IP) networks which can support both broadband and landline telephone services.  Internet based call services are becoming more common place as the PSTN is reaching its end of life and becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to maintain.

Our IT Solutions team are experts in helping businesses migrate from traditional phone systems to Microsoft 365 Business Voice.  We review current phone system configurations, make recommendations, and prepare a project plan, and once approved implement the Teams Business Voice solution.

Business Voice brings a feature rich cloud-based phone system, and online and audio meetings to small and medium size businesses in Microsoft 365.  Using the power of Microsoft Teams any business can now centralise communications in a single interface, unifying communications, with the one solution bringing together chat, meetings, files, apps and now calling.

As a Gamma Telcom partner we also specialise in the Gamma Horizon platform, a VoIP solution that lets you connect your office phone to your preferred device such as a laptop or mobile device.  We can provide guidance and recommend the most suitable communication system for your business.

The changes will offer many benefits to customers such as clearer, cheaper, phone calls.  Aside from being a more modern technology, VoIP has many advantages for businesses over PSTN and ISDN:

• It’s much quicker to provision new lines
• Businesses can reduce their line rental because they will need fewer physical lines
• It is incredibly scalable and flexible – e.g., a cloud-based telephone system can give users the ability to easily transfer calls between offices and locations, to use a work line whilst anywhere in the country and to see which members of a team are available to take calls

Although this transition should be straightforward for most customers, some may require additional support to update their services.  We specialise in helping businesses transition from their legacy ISDN systems to a cloud-hosted phone system.  Everything from number porting to hardware setup is managed by our onboarding team whose job is to make the move as painless as possible.

Our website has many customer testimonials from businesses who have valued our support, which can be found here.

Contact us for more information and to discuss your business telephony needs.