BT pauses Digital Voice roll-out to ensure 'no one feels left behind' in once-in-a-generation upgrade

Last year, BT began the major roll-out of Digital Voice – a new home phone service that will mean calls are made over the broadband network, rather than the 40-year-old analogue network.

Instead of plugging a home phone into a wall-mounted phone socket that people have done for decades, customers will simply connect their handset to their broadband router.

The UK is following in the footsteps of countries - including Australia, New Zealand and Sweden - that have already started this technological shift.

Chris Howe, customer director for BT, EE and Plusnet, said: "This upgrade is essential. By 2025, the analogue phone network will be switching off and just as the television went from analogue to digital, now it’s the turn of our phone lines.

"Home phone providers like us now need to move our customers to more modern voice services. This is a once-in-a-generation upgrade to ensure everyone stays connected now and into the future with a more resilient, sustainable and energy-efficient network."

Chris continued: "The analogue phone lines are based on an old technology that is breaking down too often and is unreliable. That is why it is going to be switched off in 2025.

"All phone companies will need to make this switch and at BT, we have 10 million customers to upgrade by this time.

"Not only are the existing analogue lines up to 40 years old but they use a lot of energy and are very inefficient. Moving to Digital Voice is one of the many things we can do to reduce the country’s energy consumption.

"We are also making a huge shift from copper-based networks to full fibre, so eventually it will be unsustainable and too costly to run both networks side by side.

"This new full fibre network will be the backbone for our