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Why the copper landline is being switched off now

The landline switch-off is the end of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), the copper phone service that has carried calls since the 1870s, and of ISDN, its digital version. Calls move to a digital landline that runs over your broadband, and in a second step operators close the copper wire itself and replace it with fibre. They do it because the old exchanges are hard to keep running and two networks cost more than one. The United Kingdom's PSTN closes on 31 January 2027, and France's copper network closes town by town until 2030.

YOUR HOUSECABINET 7TELEPHONE EXCHANGETO THE INTERNETTO OTHER EXCHANGESBATTERYBATTERY
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Purple: your call and the parts it usesKey
  • Purple: your call and the parts it uses
  • Yellow lamp: the house has power

Full fibre · the phone is plugged into the router

Press a button, or click the phone, the lamp or the alarm.Press a button, or tap the phone, the lamp or the alarm.

The same street on the old copper line and on full fibre. A digital landline can also run over broadband on copper.

Anatomy of the landline switch-off: one street, from your phone to the telephone exchange, on the copper line and today. The drawing is not to scale.

  1. Follow one call

    Press Play to watch the call, or scroll down and the drawing follows you one step at a time. Try it, under the drawing, makes your own call.Press Play to watch the call, or Next to go one step at a time. Try it, under the drawing, makes your own call.

  2. Step 1 of 6

    You pick up the phone

    On the copper line your phone plugs straight into the wall socket. From there a pair of copper wires runs out of the house, under the pavement and all the way to the telephone exchange. After the switch-off you plug the phone into your broadband router instead, and the router sends your voice down the line as data.

    Is it the same line my broadband uses?

    Yes. The copper network was built for phones, and France laid most of its copper in the 1970s. Since the 2000s the same pair has also carried internet, as ADSL and later VDSL.

    With full fibre, a glass fibre takes the pair's place. Where fibre has not arrived, the copper still carries the broadband. In Germany about six in ten broadband lines still ran on copper in mid-2025.

    Sources: Arcep: Que va changer la fermeture du réseau cuivre ? (2026); Bundesnetzagentur: Regulierungskonzept zur Kupfer-Glas-Migration (2026)

  3. Step 2 of 6

    Your pair reaches the street cabinet

    A few houses away stands a cabinet on the pavement. Inside, your pair joins a thicker cable that holds the pairs of every house nearby, and that cable runs on under the street to the exchange. On the copper line the cabinet needs no power of its own. Where it holds internet equipment, it does.

    Where does the phone get its power?

    From the exchange, down the same two wires. In the United Kingdom the line carries up to 48 volts of direct current while the phone rests, and the bell rings on about 70 volts of alternating current. The exchange rides out a power cut of its own. Germany's regulator says telecoms sites usually bridge one on batteries or a generator.

    Internet equipment in a street cabinet needs mains power. The same regulator notes that because the operators' sites near the customer now hold such equipment, a power cut also stops calls on the fixed network.

    Sources: Sky: Specification of analogue network interface (2013); Bundesnetzagentur: Strategiepapier Resilienz der Telekommunikationsnetze (2022)

  4. Step 3 of 6

    The exchange connects the call

    At the exchange your pair ends on a frame, among thousands of others, and the switch connects it to the line you dialled. On the copper line it holds that path open for your call alone until you hang up. Today the call leaves the exchange as data, and a computer, often in a data centre far away, connects it.

    What do PSTN and ISDN stand for?

    PSTN is the public switched telephone network: the phone network anyone can join, where exchanges switch lines together for each call. ISDN, the integrated services digital network, carried calls on the same copper as digital signals, at 64 kilobits a second.

    In Germany the switching already happens in the cloud. In February 2024 Telekom said its landline connections were controlled from data centres in Germany, and that over seventeen million customer connections had moved.

    Sources: Deutsche Telekom: ISDN, die Kommunikationsrevolution der 1990er (2016); Deutsche Telekom: Telekom completes transformation to cloud-based voice telephony (2024)

  5. Step 4 of 6

    The power goes out

    On the copper line the exchange powers your phone down the same two wires, so a corded phone still works when the lights go out. A digital landline runs through your router, and the router needs mains power. Without a battery it stops in a power cut, and the phone plugged into it stops too.

    How do I keep a phone that works in a power cut?

    Ask your provider for a battery for the router. In the United Kingdom it must last at least an hour, and some providers offer up to seven hours. France sets no minimum. Arcep advises equipment with its own battery, such as a mobile phone or a suitable box, or a box on a backup supply.

    A charged mobile phone works too. In the United Kingdom a 999 call connects through another mobile network when yours has no signal.

    Sources: Ofcom: Your landline is going digital, what you need to know (2026); Arcep: Que va changer la fermeture du réseau cuivre ? (2026)

  6. Step 5 of 6

    Why the old network closes

    Running two networks costs more than one, and every home that moves to fibre leaves the copper emptier. The switches are decades old, and Openreach says skills and parts for them are getting hard to come by. Fibre also uses less power, and it breaks down less often in bad weather.

    What happens to the exchange buildings?

    Some stay on as hubs for the fibre. Others empty out. In November 2025 Openreach left Deddington exchange in Oxfordshire, the first of its 4,600 exchanges in the United Kingdom to be fully decommissioned. Its 1,800 copper lines had moved to full fibre.

    In the Netherlands KPN had dismantled 20 exchanges by July 2023 and handed the buildings to new owners. It says those 20 sites alone save about 1,400 MWh of electricity a year, about what 500 households use.

    Orange, which closes France's copper, gives its reasons in its closure plan: fibre uses less energy than copper and suffers less from bad weather, and keeping two wired networks no longer makes sense.

    Sources: Openreach: Openreach exits Deddington Exchange (2025); KPN: KPN replaces telephone exchanges for street cabinets (2023); Orange: Plan de fermeture du réseau de boucle locale cuivre d'Orange (2022)

  7. Step 6 of 6

    Your alarm uses the line too

    Phones were not the only things on the copper. Personal alarms, burglar alarms, lift phones, fax machines and card terminals dial out on it, and some of them do not work over a digital line. Check each one with the company that supplies it before your line moves.

    How many lines are still waiting?

    In February 2026 Openreach counted roughly 2.8 million lines still on the United Kingdom's PSTN. More than half a million served businesses, and more than 12,000 were lift lines.

    Alarms set the pace of the British switch-off. In December 2023 the operators agreed that no one with a telecare alarm moves to a digital landline until the provider, the customer or the alarm company confirms a working solution.

    Sources: Openreach: Time for a big switch-up as PSTN switch-off looms (2026); GOV.UK: New measures to better protect vulnerable customers agreed with telecoms firms (2023)

The copper line and the digital landline, side by side

The phone on your table can stay the same. What changes is where it plugs in, how the call travels and where its power comes from.

Copper line

Digital landline

Where the phone plugs inOfcom

Wall socket

A pair of copper wires to the exchange

Router

Your broadband router, not the wall

Where its power comes fromOfcom (1, 2)

The exchange

Down the same two wires

Your mains

Through the router

In a power cutOfcom

It works

A corded phone needs nothing else

Needs a battery

In the UK, providers should offer one that lasts at least an hour, free, to people who depend on their landline

Phone lines in France, March 2026Arcep

6.8 million

On copper, 2.2 million of them on the old analogue network alone

29 million

On fibre and other networks: eight fixed lines in ten

When the copper closes, country by country

Each country, and often each operator, sets its own dates. Closing the old phone service and closing the copper wire are two steps, and they do not always come together.

How it came to be

  1. 1878

    The first exchange

    On 28 January the New Haven District Telephone Company opens for business in Connecticut. Its switchboard connects 21 subscribers.

    University of Connecticut Archives: the switchboard that launched the first public telephone company (2011)

  2. 1970

    The switch goes digital

    In Perros-Guirec, in Brittany, an exchange connects calls as streams of numbers for the first time in the world. Its official opening in 1972 starts the age of the digital telephone.

    Cité des Télécoms: Du 22 à Asnières au RNIS (2014)

  3. 1989

    The line goes digital

    Germany's Deutsche Bundespost shows ISDN at the CeBIT fair in Hannover. It makes the same copper line digital, at 64 kilobits a second. By 1995 it reaches the whole country.

    Deutsche Telekom: ISDN, die Kommunikationsrevolution der 1990er (2016)

  4. 1999

    Internet on the phone line

    The ITU approves ADSL, a standard for sending internet down the same copper pair that carries the phone.

    ITU-T: Recommendation G.992.1, asymmetric digital subscriber line transceivers (1999)

  5. 2017

    A date for Britain

    In November BT announces that it will retire its analogue phone networks, the PSTN among them, by the end of 2025.

    GOV.UK: New measures to better protect vulnerable customers agreed with telecoms firms (2023)

  6. 2021

    The first town without copper

    On 31 March Orange switches off the copper network of Lévis-Saint-Nom, a commune of about 700 homes west of Paris. It is the first in France.

    Orange: Plan de fermeture du réseau de boucle locale cuivre d'Orange (2022)

  7. 2023

    No more new copper lines

    In September Openreach stops selling the old copper phone service across the United Kingdom: a customer who signs a new contract moves to a digital line. Just under 10 million lines are still left to move.

    Openreach: Openreach puts the stopper on copper (2023)

What the rules say

Regulators set the terms of a switch-off: how much notice people get, and what has to keep working.

  • A phone for emergencies in a power cut

    In the United Kingdom, Ofcom's guidance says each provider should have at least one way to reach the emergency services for at least an hour in a power cut at home, free to people who depend on their landline.

    Ofcom

  • Three years' notice

    In France, Orange must name the towns where the copper will close at least 36 months ahead. The copper can only be switched off 12 months or more after new copper lines stop being sold there.

    Arcep

  • No date in German law

    Neither the European code nor Germany's telecoms act says whether or when an operator must switch its copper off. The Bundesnetzagentur wants fibre into at least 80 percent of homes and businesses before the move begins.

    Bundesnetzagentur

Where Voxbi fits

Voxbi, a cloud phone system hosted in the European Union, runs an office's calls over the internet, on desk phones, laptops and mobiles.

See it in Voxbi

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