For years, “do nothing” was a defensible enterprise telephony technique.
If the PBX was steady and no one was shouting, extending the lifetime of on‑prem voice might appear like prudent asset administration: sweat the {hardware}, renew assist, and revisit the issue “subsequent yr.”
In 2026, that logic is collapsing. Because the UK’s PSTN swap‑off in January 2027 approaches, the “do nothing” possibility is more and more priced like a premium service: tougher to employees, dearer to keep up, and riskier to run.
Doug Jones, AVP of Product Administration & Growth – Collaboration at AT&T, describes one widespread type of the issue as easy duplication.
“At the beginning, it’s having a number of phone numbers with a number of calling plans,” he mentioned in a latest UC At the moment interview.
“Enterprises, in far too many circumstances, have a desk telephone of their workplace and a telephone quantity on their cell at a minimal. You don’t actually need each of them, clearly, because it’s duplicative.”
That duplication sample is now exhibiting up in structure: UCaaS or Groups calling on high, a legacy PBX property beneath, and a shrinking PSTN footprint that prices extra every quarter.
The “do nothing” tax is changing into specific
Openreach is now pricing legacy copper like a sundown product. WLR wholesale rental rises in 2026: +20% (1 Apr), +40% (1 Jul), +40% (1 Oct): successfully doubling versus right now’s £10.65 baseline.
James Lilley, Openreach’s Managed Buyer Migrations Director, has been specific in regards to the intent.
“We have to speed up the tempo of migration to make sure no buyer is left behind,” he mentioned. “These worth changes are designed to drive motion, whereas our particular affords assist make the transition smoother for everybody.”
“The PSTN analogue community is out of date, changing into tougher to keep up and considerably dearer to run,” he claimed. “We’re passing these prices on to suppliers who proceed to promote legacy merchandise.
“If your corporation remains to be on this copper service, you’ll begin to pay a premium for a service that shall be switched off in 12 months.”
Backside line: “do nothing” is now not price‑impartial.
Why “we moved to the cloud” doesn’t all the time scale back spend
One motive the fee spike catches finance groups off guard is that many enterprises consider they already “solved telephony” by transferring customers to a UCaaS platform.
However the PSTN swap‑off is exposing a messier reality: lots of cloud voice programmes had been partial migrations. Customers moved, but numbers, name paths, particular companies, and contracts typically remained: which implies the legacy price base by no means really switched off.
That has created a visibility hole which is strictly the place twin‑run spend hides: duplicated contracts, duplicated operational processes, and “momentary” workarounds that change into everlasting.
It additionally reinforces why migration is never a one‑off. As Algo CEO Ryan Zoehner put it in a UC At the moment interview: “You’re in all probability committing to a migration right here that’s a journey, not a one‑time exercise.”
The lesson for consumers is uncomfortable however easy: cloud calling licences don’t mechanically retire the PBX prices, you must run a deliberate exit programme to unwind numbers, strains, routing, resiliency, and the lengthy tail of edge circumstances.
The shortage premium: legacy expertise and components don’t get cheaper
In the meantime, the “preserve it working” facet of the equation can also be altering.
Legacy PBX estates don’t solely price cash in contracts. They price cash after they fail, and the assist ecosystem is shrinking.
In line with Ed Savory, Enterprise Growth Director at Gamma:
“The skillset of engineers who keep these older techniques is changing into extra scarce, and sourcing substitute components is dear, if not not possible. If a PBX fails, companies might discover themselves with no viable resolution, inflicting main disruptions.”
Vendor timelines compress “optionally available” selections
Vendor roadmaps create one other stress: the window to increase legacy techniques safely is narrowing.
Continuant’s David Shelby, whose organisation has lengthy supported legacy voice estates, highlights a timeline many enterprises might not have internalised.
“The PBX is useless,” he wrote in Might 2025. “Avaya’s final PBX, the Avaya Aura, shall be in Finish of Producer Assist by the top of 2026. As for Mitel, it already now not sells new PBX techniques, and received’t promote new licenses by December 2025.”
When official assist sunsets, consumers find yourself in paid‑for exceptions, prolonged tiers, third‑get together upkeep, and “particular case” engineering: the place predictability disappears.
In April 2025, Mitel’s CMO Eric Hanson advised CX At the moment that the seller sees “hybrid” as the longer term.
“We consider the longer term is hybrid: a mixture of SaaS, on‑prem, non-public cloud, and the whole lot in between, supported by skilled companies.”
Complexity is the hidden price multiplier
If there’s a unifying theme throughout these pressures: copper pricing, partial migrations, expertise shortage, and vendor EoL, it’s complexity.
Enterprises pay a premium as a result of they’ve a PBX plus exceptions: a multi‑vendor property stitched collectively over years, with unclear possession and uneven governance.
Bandwidth’s Enterprise Communications Panorama survey affords a helpful indicator of how widespread sprawl has change into. In its 2025 analysis, 26% of enterprise IT leaders mentioned they’re managing 4 or extra UC and call centre platforms.
That multi‑platform actuality makes twin‑working simple to create, and exhausting to show off.
As No Jitter’s Eric Krapf put it:
“Virtually each giant enterprise communications atmosphere is sprawling, various, multivendor, and constructed upon buy selections made, in lots of circumstances, by earlier generations of IT / communications management.”
That sprawl is the place hidden spend lives: overlapping contracts, redundant numbers, unused circuits, and “momentary” workarounds that grew to become everlasting.
Rebuilding the enterprise case: what leaders are doing in another way
So what does a sane path ahead appear like, particularly for enterprises already partway by cloud voice adoption?
The primary shift is to cease treating voice as a licence train and begin treating it as infrastructure.
The playbook is shifting from “deploy a product” to “run an exit programme.” Meaning discovery, governance, and operational readiness.
Raj Chadha, Senior Supervisor, Migration Technique at Openreach, captured the industrial and operational actuality in a Knowledge Middle Dynamics interview:
“Take into consideration a hospital, or a grocery store, or a espresso chain. How do you begin transferring all of them? When you’re their CP, it’s not a simple dialog. The challenges of these items typically come down to actually exhausting industrial issues.”
In different phrases, planning and sequencing matter as a result of disruption isn’t tolerated. And the longer you wait, the tougher (and dearer) it will get.
The second shift is to quantify twin‑working explicitly: UCaaS licences, cell plans, provider invoices, break/repair spikes, and inside time.
Begin by constructing a single view of each quantity/line, dependency, contract time period, and proprietor. With out that stock, “turning off the PBX” is a slogan, not a program.
The third shift is to cut back exceptions, reasonably than preserving them.
Ryan Zoehner, CEO of Algo Communication Merchandise, warns that structure selections made beneath time stress can improve complete migration price.
“Shopping for a single level resolution, we’ve seen price upwards of 30 to 60% extra on their telecom migration versus selecting one thing open customary.”
Lastly, leaders are acknowledging that migration is a program, not an occasion. That “journey” mindset is how enterprises keep away from the entice of partial completion: the place the organisation can declare progress with out really turning off the legacy price base.
The CFO query has modified
In 2026, a very powerful query for finance leaders is now not “what does migration price?” It’s: what does ready price?
Openreach is elevating wholesale costs, vendor roadmaps are compressing, and the legacy expertise market is tightening. The result’s a value curve that bends within the mistaken route: the longer you wait, the extra you pay to face nonetheless.
CFOs have a superb intuition for what meaning: the premium part has begun.
