The Landline Switch-Off: Will Your Care Alarm Still Work?

There is a deadline coming that almost nobody is talking about, and it affects some of the most vulnerable people in the country. By January 2027 the old analogue telephone network is being switched off for good. Around two million people in the UK wear a pendant alarm or use a fall detector that was designed to dial out over that network.

A lot of those devices will be fine. Some will not. The problem is that a failed telecare alarm usually looks exactly like a working one—the light is on, the unit is plugged in, nothing appears wrong—right up until the day somebody presses the button and nothing happens.

If you have a parent or relative in Sussex with a personal alarm, this article is the checklist we'd want our own families to work through.

What Is Actually Changing

The Public Switched Telephone Network—the copper phone line that has run into British homes for a century—is being retired. Phone calls are moving to digital voice, which carries the call over your broadband connection instead.

For most households this is genuinely a non-event. The handset plugs into the router rather than the wall socket, and calls carry on. Providers are migrating customers in batches, so your street may switch months before or after the next one over.

Two consequences matter enormously if there is a care alarm in the house:

1. Older alarms may not dial out reliably. Analogue telecare units send tones down the line to reach a monitoring centre. Digital voice handles those tones differently. Some units cope perfectly. Others connect intermittently, drop mid-call, or fail to raise the alarm at all.

2. Digital lines die in a power cut. The old copper line was powered from the exchange, which is why a corded phone still worked when the lights went out. Digital voice depends on your router and your electricity supply. No power, no router, no call—unless a battery backup has been fitted.

Why This Slips Through the Cracks

The migration is usually arranged between the householder and the phone provider. The telecare alarm was often supplied years earlier by the council, a charity or a private company, and nobody in that conversation necessarily mentions it.

So an engineer visits, the phone works perfectly at the end of the appointment, everyone is satisfied—and the alarm sitting quietly in the hallway was never tested. In the households we visit, the alarm is frequently the one device nobody thought to check.

There is help available: Openreach's Prove Telecare service, running nationwide since October 2025, is designed to identify at-risk households before they are migrated, and thousands of engineers have had additional training for vulnerable customer visits. But it only works if somebody knows the alarm is there.

The Four Things to Do Now

1. Tell the phone or broadband provider

Ring them and say plainly: someone in this household uses a telecare alarm. That flags the account so the household is treated as vulnerable, which changes how and when the migration is handled and what support is offered. Do this before you get a switch date, not after.

2. Ask the alarm provider a direct question

Contact whoever supplies or monitors the alarm—the council's telecare team, the charity, or the private company—and ask: is this specific unit approved for digital voice? Not "will it probably work". Have the model number to hand. If they can't confirm it, treat that as a no.

3. Test it properly, after the switch

Most monitoring services have a test procedure that raises a genuine call to the centre. Use it. Then use it again a week later. An alarm that connects once isn't proof of an alarm that connects reliably.

4. Sort out the power cut question

Ask what happens if the electricity goes off. Providers must offer a battery backup solution to customers identified as vulnerable, but it generally has to be requested and fitted. If the answer is vague, that's a gap you need to close.

If the Alarm Is More Than a Few Years Old

Our honest view: if the unit predates the digital rollout, replacing it is usually the better answer than hoping it copes.

Modern telecare units are built for this world. The good ones connect over the mobile network rather than the phone line, which sidesteps the broadband question entirely, and carry an internal battery measured in hours or days rather than minutes. That combination removes both failure modes at once.

Prices vary, but this is not a luxury purchase, and it is considerably cheaper than the alternative. We cover the full range of choices in our guide to elderly monitoring systems in the UK.

The Case for Not Relying on a Button at All

There's a deeper problem with pendant alarms that the switch-off has usefully exposed: they only work if the person can press them. If someone falls awkwardly, has a stroke, or isn't wearing the pendant because it's uncomfortable and it's on the bedside table, the button never gets pressed.

This is why the systems we build take a different approach. HomeHub Guardian uses discreet sensors around the home to learn what a normal day looks like—when the kettle goes on, when the bathroom is used, when someone moves between rooms. If the pattern breaks in a way that suggests something is wrong, family are alerted automatically. Nobody has to press anything.

It runs over broadband and mobile rather than the analogue phone line, so the switch-off is irrelevant to it. And it doesn't put cameras in private rooms, which is what makes it acceptable to the people actually living with it. We go into the reasoning in more depth in helping elderly parents live independently.

We're not suggesting everyone needs to rip out a pendant alarm. Plenty of people are well served by one. But if you're already having to replace or re-test a device because of the switch-off, it's a sensible moment to ask whether a button is really the right safety net.

The Short Version

• The analogue phone network is gone by January 2027 and your household will be migrated at some point before then.
• Older telecare alarms may fail silently on a digital line—they can look completely normal while being useless.
• Digital lines stop working in a power cut unless battery backup has been arranged.
• Tell your phone provider there's an alarm in the house. Ask the alarm provider if the model is digital-approved. Test it live. Twice.
• If in doubt, replace it with a unit that runs on the mobile network and has real battery backup.

This is a ten-minute phone call that could matter enormously. If you've been meaning to get round to it for a relative, this is the nudge.