A telecoms company is hosting a series of events over the summer to raise awareness of the change from analogue to digital landlines.
Set to be rolled out by the end of January 2027, all British Telecom (BT) lines will be upgraded to digital as the analogue system has become outdated.
BT will be hosting 40 events throughout Scotland in July and in August.
Experts will show customers how BT’s new home phone service, Digital Voice, works and will also demonstrate how other products work.
Some events will take place in Edinburgh, Stornoway, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Inverness, although there will be events held in all local authorities.
Vicky Hicks, senior engagement manager at BT, said: “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.
“So far, we’ve prevented over 1.2 million scam calls from reaching our customers and flagged more than 6.4 million potential nuisance calls.
“Thanks to upgrades to Scotland’s broadband infrastructure, led by BT Group and government partners in some locations, more than 96% of Scotland now has access to superfast broadband and around 42% of the country has access to BT’s full fibre broadband.
“This means the vast majority of our customers won’t experience much of a difference in their service when they make the switch”.
While the shift from analogue to digital aims to help all BT customers, the company hopes the move will be especially helpful for its most vulnerable clients, including those who have additional needs.
Vulnerable customers who use telecare alarm systems through BT will not have their systems swapped until at least spring 2025.
This will allow time for data sharing agreements with local authorities and to allow for in-home support for telecare users.
BT will focus initially on switching customers who have not used their landline over the last 12 months, encouraging them to take a digital landline provided over full fibre broadband, where available.
The company also announced plans to offer a dedicated landline service for customers who do not 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.
For more information visit:
https://www.bt.com/digital-voice