By Michael Pinchas, Founder and CEO, Telecom Experts
An E1 PRI trunk carries 30 voice channels. In most of the small and mid-sized offices I audit, a handful of those channels are busy at peak hour, and the rest sit idle while the business pays for them every month. In 2027, keeping that circuit stops being a choice. BT plans to retire the UK analogue telephone network at the end of January 2027, and carriers in many other markets are winding down copper and ISDN on their own timelines. For a large share of businesses, 2027 is the year their phone system moves to IP whether they planned it or not.
That migration is overdue, and on paper it is good news. In practice, how a business moves matters more than the fact that it moves. Here is where I expect the market to go.
Prediction 1: The migration becomes a deadline project, and deadline projects are bought badly
The businesses that postponed the move will now make it under time pressure. Under time pressure, nobody runs a tender. They sign the bundle their incumbent carrier puts in front of them: a multi-year commitment, handsets “included”, and an early-termination charge described as an equipment credit.
I expect 2027 to produce a wave of contracts that look cheap in month one and expensive in month twenty. The fix is simple and rarely done. Assess user needs and existing infrastructure first, count the concurrent calls you actually make, and only then ask for quotes from more than one provider.
Prediction 2: Lock-in moves from the wire to the platform
On copper, lock-in was physical. The line ran into your building, and switching meant a technician and a wait.
In cloud voice, lock-in is quieter and harder to see. It lives in handsets that are provisioned to work with one provider only. It lives in number-porting procedures that take weeks. It lives in call recordings, call detail records and IVR flows stored in formats you cannot export, and in per-extension pricing that charges for users who left the company a year ago.
My prediction: in 2027, the buyers who negotiate the exit before they sign the entry will be the ones who save money. Exit terms will become a line item in serious procurement. That means a defined porting timeline, export of recordings and call data in an open format, and SIP endpoints based on open standards that any provider can register.
Prediction 3: The word “cloud” will be stretched past breaking point
Expect a lot of legacy architecture sold under a cloud label. Hosted IP Centrex, “IP-PRI” and proprietary hosted PBXs will all be marketed as cloud communications during the switchover.
There is a one-line test. If the bill follows actual usage, it is cloud. If you pay for 30 channels whether you use 4 or 25, it is a circuit with a new name.
Prediction 4: Resilience moves from the brochure into the contract
When voice rides on the internet connection, an internet outage is a phone outage. Many businesses will discover this the first time their access line drops and the switchboard goes silent.
In 2027 I expect informed buyers to demand three things in writing: automatic failover routing to mobile numbers or a secondary trunk when the primary path fails, a cellular backup for the access line itself, and service credits for downtime defined in the SLA rather than promised in a sales call. The lines nobody remembers will also surface: alarm panels, lift emergency phones, and old equipment that still expects an analogue dial tone. Each of them needs a migration plan before the copper is switched off, not after.
Prediction 5: Voice becomes part of the IT stack, and a bigger security target
Once voice is IP, it joins the rest of the systems. CRM integration, business messaging, call analytics and automated transcription of calls will become standard expectations, not premium add-ons. That raises the value of voice data, which brings us back to Prediction 2. If your call history is useful, you need to be able to take it with you.
It also widens the attack surface. Badly configured SIP trunks and PBXs exposed to the internet are an invitation to toll fraud, and a single weekend of fraudulent international calls can cost more than a year of service. I expect toll-fraud protection, call-rate limits and spending alerts to become standard questions in every voice tender.
Where this leaves buyers
At Telecom Experts, we are spending more of our time on the parts of the project that carriers rarely discuss: needs assessment before the purchase, failover design before go-live, and exit terms before the signature. That is where I believe the real savings of the next two years are.
The copper switch-off is a once-in-a-generation chance to renegotiate business voice. Businesses that treat it as a procurement decision, not a technical chore, will end 2027 paying less and owning more of their own communications.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Pinchas is a communications engineer and the founder and CEO of Telecom Experts (teleco.co.il), a Tel Aviv-based communications integrator. With more than 25 years of experience, he advises businesses, from small offices to multi-branch organizations, on cloud PBX, SIP trunks, business internet and fiber, and unified communications. His focus is what carriers rarely spell out: contract exit terms, SLA credits for downtime, failover when the office line drops, toll-fraud risk and the real monthly cost per extension.
