BT will be holding an event in Bath next month to help raise awareness of the change from analogue to digital landlines by the end of January 2027.
The telecommunications company will hold events across the region throughout September to visit communities to talk to customers about how landlines will be changing over the coming years.
This will include the steps affected customers will need to take and the support available.
Neighbourhood Watch, who have teamed up with BT to help raise awareness of the switchover, will also be hosting a number of engagement events from the start of September until March 2025, with four dates already announced.
Moving customers to digital phonelines, which, for most customers, will see calls made over a broadband line, is being prioritised urgently by telecoms providers as the 40-year-old analogue landline technology is becoming increasingly fragile.
The event in Bath will be held in Morrisons car park, York Place, Bath, BA1 6AN on Friday 27th September between 10am and 4pm.
Vicky Hicks, Senior Engagement Manager at BT, said: “We will be visiting Somerset throughout September to speak to our customers face-to-face and answer any questions they may have about the essential upgrade from analogue to digital landlines.
“The landline is here to stay, and for the majority of customers, making the switch simply means plugging your phone into a broadband router instead of into a wall-mounted phone socket.
“This will bring new benefits like advanced spam call blocking. On average, we prevent 15,000 scam calls a day from reaching our customers.
“Thanks to upgrades to the South West’s broadband infrastructure, the vast majority of homes and businesses have access to superfast broadband and more than one million can now get ultrafast, full fibre broadband using the Openreach network.
“This means most of our customers won’t experience much of a difference in their service when they make the switch.”
From this autumn, BT will be offering a new, more advanced battery back-up unit, which enables digital calls to be made in the event of a power outage.
The new battery – available free to customers with additional needs – is smaller and lighter than the current version and features a standby mode which can be used during prolonged power cuts.
BT recently announced an update to its timetable for moving all customers off the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and onto digital landlines by the end of January 2027, outlining a series of improvements to better protect vulnerable customers and those with additional needs, including telecare users.
It also confirmed that customers who identify as vulnerable, have additional needs or who use a telecare alarm system will not be switched until Spring 2025 at the earliest.
This allows time for data sharing agreements with local authorities or telecare companies to be in place and in-home support for telecare users to become available.
The company also announced plans to offer a dedicated landline service for customers who don’t use broadband from the Autumn.
This will allow customers to use their landline in the same way as they do today until a digital solution becomes available, or 2030, if that comes sooner.
