Storm Arwen has highlighted risk of shutting down PSTN

The impact of Storm Arwen on telecommunications has highlighted the risks to energy customers from the scheduled shutdown of BT’s Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) in 2025, an industry expert has warned.

Both Ofgem and the government’s  Energy Emergencies Executive Committee (E3C) recently published their complementary reports into the response of the networks following last November’s storm, which resulted in thousands of people being without power for multiple days.

One specific area of criticism was the networks’ handling of communication, with some who tried to call their network operator during the outage reporting lengthy waiting times. Others meanwhile were not able to get through to a person.

Speaking to Utility Week Andy Manning, principal economic regulation specialist at Citizens Advice, gave his thoughts on the impact of the storm and what this could mean for future extreme weather events.

He said: “What this shines a light on is some of the risks that might happen when the Public Switched Telephone Network lines are turned off, the old traditional BT landlines.

“They are getting turned off in 2025, so how are we going to find a robust and resilient way for people to be able to communicate with the networks in event of a power cut if they haven’t got traditional landlines which have their own power supply?”

He continued: “The old landlines have separate power sources so they keep working in a power cut. Once that is turned off then what we have seen in Storm Arwen could become more commonplace – people struggling to contact the networks in a power cut. So we need that to be sorted out.”

The E3C’s report also called for network operators to work with the government and Ofcom to secure the utility spectrum so the energy sector can develop its own resilient data networks in the future.