The 2027 PSTN and ISDN shutdown is a huge event in the telecoms industry, which was first announced back in 2017. The PSTN has been in place for over a hundred years and was once the main telephone network used by millions of households and businesses throughout the UK.
Despite its demise in recent years, the network is still being used throughout the UK not just for voice calls but broadband, sending faxes, making payments using PDQ machines, telemetric machines, panic alarms, burglary alarms etc.
All these devices or services must either be replaced or switched over to the new digital network to keep them running and operational. The 2027 timeline should provide ample time to make the switch, and for the all-important fibre infrastructure to be in place.
It all sounds simple enough and for most businesses it will be but it’s worth getting started to give you plenty of time to overcome any hurdles you find along the way. Some analogue devices can’t easily be replaced, nor can they be plugged straight into the new digital network, so you’ll need to find viable solutions.
This is the case for emergency phones / alarm buttons in lifts. These emergency devices are in place to ensure that anyone who gets stuck has the facility to make a two-way emergency call. The emergency call usually makes an external telephone call through to the lift’s manufacturer’s support line where an operator can quickly dispatch a maintenance engineer to the lift’s location. Without the alarm, people could get stuck in the lift until it’s fixed, which could take days if the fault isn’t considered an emergency.
How do lift alarms work?
When the emergency button in the lift is pressed it triggers an autodialler unit, situated on top of the lift cabin, to make a telephone call over the PSTN. When the PSTN is switched off, the emergency call facility will no longer work – causing a safety risk – and resulting in a temporary disablement of the lift until a replacement for the PSTN service is found.
Unfortunately, to address the issue it’s not as simple as just plugging the analogue autodialler into the digital network via a broadband router, as it won’t work.
However, installing a GSM gateway with a multinet roaming SIM is an easy and cost-effective solution. The gateway can plug directly into the autodialler’s existing cabling and provides GSM connectivity to the new digital network.
The gateway also has integrated battery backup that conforms with BS EN 81-28 Lift Regulations and Standards to last at least 1 hour on standby with 15 minutes of talk time, which means emergency calls can still be made even if the power to the building is lost.
Furthermore, the monthly GSM connectivity charges are considerably less than the ongoing cost for the PSTN service and so the solution ends up paying for itself overtime. The sooner you implement it, the more long-term savings you make.
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