Telephony replacement: analogue and critical lines

Addressing BT's removal of analogue telephone lines

BT plans to switch off all analogue telephone services in December 2025 which means the University needs to migrate its critical and analogue lines from the current Chorus telephony service to a chosen alternative solution(s) by that deadline.

What are critical and analogue lines?

  • critical lines are telephone lines that serve critical services, such as lift phones, alarm lines, and backup lines for college lodges. They can be used for inbound and outbound phone calls and will continue to work in the event of power outages or disruption to the Chorus phone system.  They use dedicated copper wiring and network infrastructure, and have a Service Level Agreement (SLA) which means that outages should be responded to by our suppliers within 4 hours 
  • analogue lines are like critical lines and use the same network infrastructure. The difference is that they usually provide telephony to places that 'VOIP' (Voice Over Internet Protocol) telephony couldn't easily reach at the time of installation, and that the service is not critical to life or business operations

What does this mean for my college or department?

In order to identify and deliver an appropriate new solution for the delivery of analogue and critical lines, the Telephony Replacement project team needs to fully understand your current requirements for those that are currently centrally managed by Chorus.  We have employed the expertise of Red Rose Technologies, a specialist telephony consultancy, to help us:

  • ascertain where critical and analogue extensions terminate within each building 
  • check what devices are working on critical and analogue extensions, e.g. call buttons in lifts, alarms, control point etc 
  • confirm which lines could be ceased, whether any additional lines are needed, which are critical and which are analogue, and whether any have already moved to another service etc

We ask that you collaborate with the project and Red Rose to ensure your requirements are accurately captured. The project will coordinate migration of all centrally managed analogue and critical lines to the new solution.

Critical and analogue lines not provided via Chorus

  • You will also need to review any analogue services that are not provided via Chorus.  This includes directly provided lines, which will not be covered by the Telephony Replacement project but will also need to be removed or replaced
  • We hold some records for directly provided BT lines and will provide support and advice where possible 

 Detailed information 

Expand All

Date Activity
June -November 2024 Ascertain college and department requirements for centrally managed analogue and critical lines
December 2024 Proposal of alternative solution(s), migration process and schedule, cost model, support model and pricing information and briefing of appropriate bodies (for example, committees)
From January 2025 Migration to new solution(s)
Hilary term 2025 Post migration charging model published
From August 2025 Post-migration charging model comes into effect

 

  • The project will cover the cost of converting lines over to the proposed new solution(s) for lines that are managed centrally
  • Departments and colleges might need to budget for costs to upgrade associated equipment (for example, an ageing alarm system that may be incompatible with new technology) or for analogue lines that they manage themselves
  • A charging model for operating the analogue lines after migration will be considered as the new preferred solution(s) is identified and a contract negotiated. This information for analogue and critical lines will be communicated in Hilary term 2025 and charges will apply from August 2025, depending on the confirmed schedule of migration.  The new level of charges may be affected by factors such as departments and colleges reducing their number of analogue lines as they identify lines that are no longer required

Information about the new service model will be shared when available.

Can colleges or departments with analogue lines managed by IT Services decide not to take the centrally recommended solution?

Yes, but only by moving to manage the lines themselves and also moving to new numbers. IT Services numbers cannot be ported to other suppliers.  All analogue lines will need to be replaced before the BT shutdown in December 2025

Can colleges or departments who manage their own analogue lines now transfer these now to be managed centrally by IT Services?

Potentially yes, but this would need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and there are anticipated costs involved for changing over any analogue lines not currently centrally managed by IT Services

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