Digital Landlines: Rural Communities

Ben Maguire Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

I do. It is a major infrastructure change and there are particular considerations around the elderly and the vulnerable. I have heard from many constituents who have shared their concerns about the switchover, mostly about fear of losing that means of contact during a power cut and not having a mobile phone signal to fall back on. Elderly people often speak of their phone—their landline, as we would call it—as their lifeline, not only for their health support, but to be able to be in touch with friends and family, their support network. One constituent who has had the changeover talks about having her landline cut off, in her words, and replaced with a battery phone, which she says is too bulky for her to carry around and which does not reach all parts of the house. Because she lives alone and is disabled, she has relied on having multiple phones in the house, including a landline extension in her bedroom. The new phone has to be placed on a charger overnight, and the charger is located in a room up steps that she struggles to reach, so she no longer has a phone within reach of her bed.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I spoke last week to one of my constituents, the daughter of a 99-year-old lady who was looking for her commode in the night. She pressed her personal alarm, but owing to Storm Darragh and the power cuts, nobody came, and very sadly she died in the dark. She was discovered after two days. Does the right hon. Member agree that Ofcom needs to have real teeth now to take account of that and force the communication companies either to put battery back-ups on the masts, or to ensure that constituents get the batteries on their phones to make sure that that never happens again?

[Damian Hinds]

First, my sympathies to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent’s family in that terrible case. I do agree, and those are points I will come on to.

Identifying vulnerable users is vital; some will already be known to the communications providers, but the list of vulnerable customers is further expanded by data-sharing agreements with local authorities and housing associations. That is not a perfect process, and there is no complete picture of that user group, which leaves some elderly and disabled users exposed to non-voluntary migration.

The previous Government did make important progress with the PSTN charter in 2023, with steps that the industry should take to protect vulnerable consumers and a pause on non-voluntary migrations unless a customer had not used their landline in the previous 12 months. That came after several incidents where medical alarms had failed to function on digital landlines, with tragic results. The March 2024 network operator charter, a voluntary agreement between the Government and the communications providers, aimed to ensure a smoother transition.