Richard Tang interview with Juliette Scott, Openreach

Richard Tang has released the most recent of his interview series, this time with Juliette Scott of Openreach. Juliette is the Senior Manager for all IP Migrations and Exchange Exit. This means that she is in charge of getting the 5,500 telephone exchanges reduced to a new estate of just 959. The PSTN (public switched telephone network) is being switched off at the end of January 2027, and there is a lot of work to do before this is completed, with 1.9m lines left to switch.

A key point from the interview is that Openreach says the PSTN deadline will not be pushed back again, and industry should not expect another delay after it was originally moved from December 2025 to January 2027. To try and incentivise people to switch WLR services, a 20% price rise took place in April, and there are further 40% rises expected for July and October. The hope is that commercial pressure will help encourage the migration to Digital Voice. Scott says there will not be a “big bang” disconnection on 1 February 2027 for ordinary single-line residential or small business voice users. Some remaining WLR voice lines may be moved to EVAc (emergency voice access), where capacity exists, but this is not guaranteed to be available, and it does not support broadband. Migration of this product will also be more difficult. It’s noted that there is no option to do this for ISDN, and these customers will need to switch to a hosted voice (VoIP) service.

A substantial part of the interview focuses on vulnerable customers, telecare devices, panic alarms and life-critical services. Scott says government involvement increased after incidents elsewhere in the industry, and that Openreach and CPs have since strengthened migration processes.

Openreach has developed a Prove Telecare process: an engineer checks the telecare device with the alarm receiving centre before migration, performs the upgrade, then checks again afterwards. If the device cannot be made to work, the service is rolled back so the customer is not left without functioning telecare. Scott says Openreach has completed more than 35,000 Prove Telecare installs.

You can watch the full interview here: