Openreach adds 86 exchanges to its stop-sell programme

The 86 locations cover around 500,000 premises and the company is providing 12 months’ notice so it will stop selling copper services in these exchanges on 2 August 2022.

This brings the total number of exchange locations where Openreach plans to stop selling legacy analogue services to 379, covering a total of 3.4m premises. In these stop-sell locations, some customers may be exempt from moving at the moment if they are subject to special exceptions. Exceptions can include vulnerable customers and critical equipment users.

James Lilley, director managed customer migrations, Openreach, explained, “Just over two years from now, Openreach will stop selling products that rely on the public switched telephone network. And over the next five years, we’ll upgrade some 14 million analogue lines – including the now ageing traditional landline telephone service – to digital all-internet protocol.

“Ultimately, the plan is to withdraw all services that rely on the old PSTN by December 2025 and, from that point on, Communications Providers (CPs) will own the delivery of voice services. This is a really big deal for our industry , we are upgrading the UK’s digital infrastructure as we build our full fibre network to 25m homes and business by 2026.”

Openreach is also adapting its existing copper network to cope with IP based voice traffic. This helps to start the transition before FTTP networks are fully available, with available products including SoGEA and SoGfast.

The full list of 86 additional exchanges is below.