What’s the Deal with the ISDN Switch Off?

BT Wholesale have announced that from 2020 you will no longer be able to use ISDN and is firmly lining itself up for a complete switch by 2025.

But what Does that Mean to Us?

In a nutshell, BT is moving its entire voice network to Voice over IP (VoIP). VoIP has been a proven platform for voice for some time now and this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to replace your telephone system.

Why is BT Flicking the Switch?

Why do you no longer use your Nokia 3210? Same reason, but on a much bigger scale. Also, maintaining several old networks while simultaneously developing a whole new one is proving very expensive for BT. By blending all the services (voice, data, video, and even broadcasting) to the format, BT only has to maintain one network, rather than several.

It is also worth bearing in mind that 2025 might not be Doomsday for ISDN, the date is not set in stone. It’s BT’s intention to stop selling ISDN by 2020 and shut it down completely by 2025 – but this is assuming they have managed to switch all customers over VoIP before then. This means that a viable alternative must be available to everyone well before 2025 and for many of us who are not in the City, (and many who are), high speed Internet is yet to arrive…

So what Should you Do?

Well I think we can all agree that we don’t want to buy technology that’s on the way out, so assuming you’re in an area that can purchase a VoIP system, there are two things you need to consider:

Is Your Internet Connection Good Enough to Deliver VoIP?

While VoIP does not use very much data when compared with other services like video, you must ensure you have a stable enough connection. While it doesn’t take a lot of speed to move a phone call from A to B Phone calls are really delicate. If it takes three seconds to download a web page we don’t mind, but if you lose three seconds in a telephone call you might miss a whole sentence. You need to analyse whats going on with your connection and consider whether what you have is up to the job.