The Digital Switchover in Nottingham: What It Means for Your Personal Alarm

Analogue phone lines are switched off on 31 January 2027 and every landline in Nottingham becomes digital. An older pendant alarm plugged into a phone socket in Bulwell, St Ann's or Clifton may not be able to call for help afterwards. Nottingham City Council's own alarm service is unusually far along with its upgrade, which is good news if you are one of its customers.

What is changing in Nottingham, and when?

Openreach is retiring the analogue telephone network by 31 January 2027. After that a home phone in Nottingham runs over the broadband connection, with the handset plugged into the router rather than a socket on the wall. The number stays the same and an ordinary call sounds much the same.

What changes is anything else that shared the line. Openreach reported roughly 2.8 million lines still on the old network in February 2026. Across Sherwood, Mapperley and Wollaton those remaining lines tend to belong to households that have never switched provider, which is very often the same households that have an alarm sitting quietly by the phone.

Will my personal alarm still work after the switch-off?

Only if it is digital ready or works over the mobile network. An analogue base unit signals using audio tones down a copper line, and digital lines do not carry those tones reliably. The Telecare National Action Plan from DHSC and DSIT commits that no telecare user will be migrated to a digital landline without the communications provider, the customer or the telecare provider confirming that a compatible and functioning telecare solution is in place.

The other risk is a power cut. A digital line depends on the broadband router, which stops when the electricity does. Ofcom requires providers to give at least one hour of access to emergency organisations during a power cut, and says providers should offer battery backup free of charge to customers who depend on their landline to call the emergency services. That backup comes from the phone company, and it protects a 999 call rather than the alarm itself.

How do I check whether my alarm uses the phone line?

1. Look behind the base unit. A thin lead into a white phone socket means analogue. A lead into the broadband router means it has already been converted. A power lead on its own usually means a mobile unit with a SIM inside.
2. Check who answers. A Nottingham On Call unit will normally say so on the label. Anything else should carry a company name and a customer number.
3. Do a test call. Press the button, say clearly that it is a test, and check the operator has the right address and the right keyholders on file.

What about alarms provided by Nottingham City Council?

Nottingham City Council's care alarm service is Nottingham On Call, contactable on 0115 746 9101 or at atservice@nottinghamcity.gov.uk, and based at Harvey Road in Bilborough. It is one of the more transparent council services in the country on this subject, with its own digital switchover page, which states plainly that "in January 2027 the analogue phone network is being switched off".

The service has also said what it actually did about it. It paused taking on new service requests for a period so it could run "an urgent programme to replace remaining analogue care alarms", wrote to and rang customers to book installation appointments, and negotiated an extension with BT to keep its analogue telephony running to the end of March 2026 while that work finished. It reports that more than 60% of customers now have a digital care alarm, and that 95% of residents in the council's independent living communities who want a care alarm have a digital one.

Read that carefully, because it cuts both ways. Most Nottingham On Call customers are already safe. A minority are not, and nobody outside the service can tell you which group an address is in. One phone call answers it.

What should Nottingham residents do now?

Tell the landline provider that someone in the household uses a personal alarm. That fact on the account is what triggers the national protections before an engineer turns up to convert the line.

Then work out who supplied the alarm. If it is Nottingham On Call, ring and ask where that address sits in the upgrade programme. If a relative lives in Arnold, Carlton, West Bridgford or Beeston, they are outside the city boundary and come under Nottinghamshire County Council, which runs its own telecare through a system it calls Digital Lifeline and can be reached on 0300 500 80 80. If the alarm was bought privately years ago, assume nothing. Any replacement should run on 4G, since 3G mobile networks are now switched off.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start: tell your phone company an alarm is in use, ring Nottingham On Call to confirm whether that address has been converted, and plan a replacement if it has not. See our SOS pendant alarms in Nottingham page, our digital switchover guide, or read what happens if a telecare alarm stops working. Call our UK team on 01704 332840.

Holden Grange is a UK telecare provider based in Southport, a TSA member and certified under the TEC Quality Standards Framework. Our alarm receiving centre is UK based and operates 24 hours a day.