This week at work, BT told us they wouldn’t be renewing our analogue phone service. Since we only use the line to support VDSL, that wasn’t a huge problem (just convert it to a DSL-only service).

This week at church, Virgin Media told us they wouldn’t be renewing our analogue phone service. Since it hasn’t made or taken a call in years, that wasn’t a huge problem.

This week at home, multiple advertisers in the village machine asked me to take the fax number off their advert.

What do all these events have in common? Yes, that’s right, from 2025 in the UK, analogue phone services will no longer be a thing. And it would seem that business customers are already being encouraged/forced to modernise.

I should add that in both the first two cases, some sort of VoIP service was offered instead - but since the lines only existed to support internet, it didn’t really matter. All the calls have been VoIP/mobile for years, not least because this made diverting them or taking them elsewhere a snap during the pandemic.

All of this makes pretty good sense in the commercial sector, but I do remain somewhat nervous about how this is going to go down with the over-65s in the domestic sector. Is it really necessary for my elderly aunt with no internet service, and a line-powered analogue handset, to be forcibly shipped a router and some adapters which she will need help to connect, assuming there’s even a power socket handy next to her phone jack?

Will the aforementioned kit be as reliable as the line-powered analogue handset she’s had since I was a small boy?

It won’t be long before we get to find out. I see some tech support trips to family in my future, but my sympathies to those who don’t have someone they can call (if their phone works) for help…