For years, migrating to cloud telephony was framed as a destination.
Move users onto a UCaaS platform, retire the PBX, tick the box – and the public switched telephone network would quietly fade into history.
Yet as national switch-off deadlines approach, that neat narrative is collapsing.
Organisations that thought they had completed their cloud voice journey are discovering they merely paused the difficult parts.
Governance was deferred, networks were never fully tuned and identity controls remained disjointed.
The PSTN switch-off is turning these oversights into operational risks. What once looked like a straightforward telecoms upgrade is revealing itself as something deeper: a test of communications hygiene.
Strategy First, Not Afterthought
Alexander Wettjen, EVP Sales and Marketing at NFON, argues that many organisations misunderstood the nature of the transition from the beginning.
“The PSTN switch-off is less a straightforward migration project and more a wake-up call to rethink communications infrastructure in a strategic, integrated and future-proof way,” he says.
“Many organisations have adopted cloud telephony, but often as a standalone solution, without properly aligning it with network readiness, identity management, endpoints, monitoring, operational processes and more.”
In other words, cloud telephony was treated as a product deployment rather than a business capability.
The PBX moved to the cloud, but the organisation around it did not change.
As the PSTN safety net disappears, these shortcuts are becoming visible.
“It is now becoming clear that those who have simply moved telephony into the cloud, without taking a holistic approach, will face challenges around quality, transparency and operations as the PSTN switch-off progresses; ultimately, the future viability of their business communications is at stake.”
Yet he sees opportunity in the disruption.
Cloud voice can be a foundation for automation, analytics and smarter service delivery.
“At the same time, the transition offers an opportunity not only to modernise communications, but to develop them in a more purposeful way,” he says.
“When business telephony is understood as a core component of the overall communications strategy, it creates the foundation for automation, greater transparency and improved service processes.”
AI-driven call summaries, real-time transcription and intelligent routing promise new efficiencies. But these capabilities depend on disciplined implementation.
The PSTN switch-off is essentially forcing organisations to take communications seriously at last.
“The switch-off marks not only the end of a legacy technology, but also a clear impetus to structure communications in a smarter, more coherent and consistently future-oriented way.”
Networks And Reality
If NFON speaks to the strategy, Chris Rolls, Head of UC Experience at Vonage, speaks to operational reality.
He sees organisations struggling with timelines and complexity.
“Enterprises across Europe and North America are facing a tight timeline with PSTN’s impending switch-off, as Germany’s PSTN switch-off is already complete, and the UK’s retirement is set for 2027,” he says.
“The complexity of migration is proving harder than initially expected, since many organisations are still relying on traditional private branch exchange systems.”
Voice traffic is shifting to IP, but expectations have not changed.
Users still expect perfect calls, and that puts pressure on networks never designed for real-time communications.
“Users will always expect a call to function properly, whether it’s carried over VoIP, PSTN, or a mix of both,” he says.
“In practice, this makes it harder on enterprises because VoIP relies on the IP network. So, call quality and reliability are in the spotlight because they depend directly on the internet connection.”
The challenge is not only technical but cultural. Voice is converging with customer experience, contact centre operations and regulatory requirements.
“The PSTN switch-off coincides with another critical shift: the convergence of unified communications and contact centre capabilities,” Rolls says.
“Organisations are discovering that they need to treat voice environments as a complete, end-to-end service.”
That means planning survivability, monitoring call quality, validating emergency routing and auditing call paths.
Many enterprises, Rolls notes, are discovering they cannot replace PSTN overnight. Hybrid strategies and staged migrations are essential.
“With deadlines approaching, enterprises need to act sooner rather than later,”
“To be successful, they will need to conduct end-to-end voice call path audits, implement proactive monitoring, create clear survivability protocols, and ensure regulatory compliance before the deadline.”
Cloud voice may be software, but it behaves like infrastructure.
Governance And Resilience
For Benny Matityahu, Vice President Unified Communications and Collaboration at AudioCodes, the PSTN switch-off is revealing how incomplete many early UCaaS projects were.
“As PSTN switch-off progresses, many organizations are discovering that migrating to UCaaS was only the first step,” he says.
“Early cloud voice deployments often prioritized speed and feature enablement… but did not always address deeper operational requirements such as network readiness, QoS monitoring, number management, and survivability.”
These omissions were tolerable while legacy systems remained available. With PSTN gone, they become existential.
“Cloud voice must be treated as a mission-critical service, not just a collaboration feature,” Matityahu says.
“Organisations need end-to-end visibility across devices, networks, and cloud connectivity models, along with clear identity controls, lifecycle management, and local survivability options to maintain calling during outages.”
Identity governance is particularly neglected. Who can make international calls, forward numbers, or provision devices? Without clear policies, organisations risk fraud, compliance breaches or operational chaos.
Numbering strategy is another hidden risk.
Years of ad hoc provisioning leave confusing routing rules that only surface during outages or migrations.
The lesson is simple, cloud voice requires the same discipline applied to finance systems or production networks. Without that discipline, reliability is accidental.
Day Two Discipline
Zach Bennett, Microsoft Teams MVP and Principal Architect at LoopUp, sees the consequences of rushed migrations every day.
“PSTN switch-off is exposing the weak points in cloud voice,” he says.
“For many enterprises, the shift to cloud telephony was driven by urgency rather than completeness. Users were migrated to Microsoft Teams Phone, or another UCaaS platform, and legacy PBX estates were pushed into the background.”
On paper, projects looked finished. In reality, they were not.
“As the legacy network disappears, anything that was unfinished, deferred, or assumed away becomes visible,” Bennett says. “What appeared to be a modern voice environment can quickly expose unresolved operational and resilience risks.”
He points to common patterns. Network readiness assessed once and never revisited, or survivability plans that remain untested.
“Across the market, a consistent pattern is emerging – many organisations enabled Teams calling several years ago but never fully completed the underlying foundations… Day-2 operations were left underdefined.”
The organisations navigating the transition best share similar habits. “They treat Teams Phone as a core business service rather than an add-on to collaboration,” Bennett added.
“They design for failure scenarios, not just steady-state operation.”
The End Of Copper, The Beginning Of Discipline
The PSTN switch-off is often described as a technology retirement, but in truth it is an organisational test.
Enterprises that treated cloud voice as a procurement exercise are scrambling to fix networks, policies and processes.
Those that treated it as infrastructure are discovering new capabilities in analytics, automation and customer experience.
Communications hygiene may not be glamorous.
It means runbooks, audits, QoS tuning, number governance and identity lifecycle management. Yet it is the difference between smooth transitions and slow-motion failures.
The copper lines are going dark, and what replaces them will be shaped not by platforms alone, but by the discipline with which organisations run them.
