BT Digital Voice costs £3 a month for the basic phone service on top of your broadband, call plans run from £12 to £18 a month, pay as you go calls cost about 20.9p a minute, and the adaptor that connects your existing handset is free. The full price list is on BT's Digital Voice pages. The changeover itself finishes by 31 January 2027, and millions of homes and small businesses are being moved across before then, many with only a few weeks' warning.
Digital Voice is BT's replacement for the ordinary landline. Your number stays the same, but calls travel over your broadband through the hub instead of through the copper socket on the wall. That one change is behind almost every question people ask about it, so let's take them in order.
How Much Does BT Digital Voice Cost?
For most customers, moving to Digital Voice costs nothing up front. The ongoing prices break down like this:
- The phone service: £3 a month added to a broadband package if you want a landline at all.
- Call plans: £12 to £18 a month depending on how much you call.
- Pay as you go: around 20.9p a minute if you skip a plan and pay per call.
- The adaptor for your existing handset: free, sent in the post.
Treat the numbers above as a guide and check the price against your own BT account before you agree to anything, since plans and prices change over time.
When Is the Digital Voice Changeover Date?
The landline switch off completes by 31 January 2027, pushed back from the original December 2025 deadline after the first waves of the changeover went badly. There is no single national switch date: BT moves customers area by area, and writes to you before your area's turn. If you want to know where your own area stands, our landline switch off postcode checker gives you your area's position and the deadline that applies to you.
Does Digital Voice Work in a Power Cut?
No. Digital Voice runs through your broadband hub, so when the power goes off, the phone goes with it. The old copper line carried its own power, which is why a corded phone kept working through a blackout. BT offers battery back-up units for people with no mobile signal or extra needs, but Ofcom has received reports of those units failing when they were actually needed. This matters most for the roughly 1.8 million people whose personal alarms and telecare pendants dial out over the phone line, which is a large part of why the deadline moved. Ofcom sets out what your provider must do for you if you depend on your landline, including during power cuts.
Can I Refuse to Have BT Digital Voice?
You can delay it, but you cannot keep an analogue line for good. The copper network is closing for every provider, not just BT, so there is no opt-out that lasts beyond January 2027. What you can do is ask for more time and extra support, and BT must give it in certain cases: if you have a telecare alarm, no mobile signal at home, or health or age related needs that make the change risky, tell BT before your changeover date rather than after. The government's guidance on the analogue to digital transition covers the protections in place for people in those groups.
Can I Still Use My Old Phone With Digital Voice?
Yes. BT sends a free adaptor that plugs your existing handset into the back of the hub, so the phone you've had for years keeps working. Two caveats. Extension sockets wired into the walls stop working, because the line into the house no longer carries calls, so a phone upstairs needs its own adaptor or a cordless handset. And some older phones misbehave on the new line, particularly early cordless models, so test yours as soon as the adaptor arrives rather than on changeover day.
Why Are So Many People Frustrated With the Switchover?
In January 2026, Ofcom warned BT it could face a formal investigation over how the changeover has been handled. That warning followed a difficult winter: pensioners and rural customers left without a working phone over Christmas, battery back-up units that failed during power cuts, and telecare alarms that went silent after the switch. The regulator has already shown it will act, fining Virgin Media £23.8 million in December 2025 over migration failures that hit vulnerable customers.
The everyday version of the problem fills BT's own support forum: handsets that cannot find the base station, replacement handsets that fail the same way as the ones they replaced, incoming calls that ring the hub but never reach the phone, and instructions that talk about an EE hub when the box on the shelf says BT, because BT is moving its home customers to the EE brand mid changeover. If your handset has been swapped three times and it still will not ring, the problem is not you. National newspapers have carried the same story from the customer's side, including people cut off from numbers they had held for fifty years. For what actually happens to your number, see whether landlines are being discontinued: the number survives the switch off, even when the changeover around it is rough.
Is BT Digital Voice Any Good?
Once it is set up and working, yes, for most homes. Calls over broadband sound clearer than copper ever did, and £3 a month for the line is fair. The honest conditions are that the phone is now only as reliable as your broadband, and that setup is where nearly everything above goes wrong. If your broadband is solid and your changeover goes smoothly, you may never think about Digital Voice again. The frustration lands on the people for whom it doesn't.
Keeping a Landline Number Without Any of the New Kit
There is a route through the switch off that involves none of the hardware above. A virtual landline number rings the mobile you already own. No hub, no adaptor, no battery back-up unit, no engineer visit, and no changeover date to wait for, because the number never touches the copper network in the first place. You can cancel your landline but keep the number: UK numbers are portable by law, so the landline number on your van, your website or your shop sign carries on ringing, just on your mobile instead of a socket in the wall.
Solofone builds this for people who work for themselves: a real UK landline number for client calls and WhatsApp Business messages, all arriving on the one phone you already carry, from £10 a month with a 7 day free trial. It suits sole traders whose number is painted on a van, and it works just as well for a household that wants to keep a familiar number without taking on new boxes and batteries.