The state of voice in Australia: copper, NBN and where VoIP fits now

Most Australian phone calls already travel as data

For most homes and businesses in cities and large towns, the shift to voice over IP happened quietly during the NBN rollout. When a premises moves to an NBN fixed-line service (fibre to the premises, node, curb, building, or HFC), the old copper telephone service is disconnected and the phone line becomes a VoIP service. Your handset plugs into the NBN modem or router instead of a wall socket, and calls travel as packets over the same connection as your internet.

That has three practical consequences that many people only discover when something goes wrong:

• Power. An old copper phone drew power from the exchange and kept working in a blackout. A VoIP phone stops when the modem loses power, unless you have a battery backup.
• Quality depends on your network. A busy upload, a congested Wi-Fi link or a poorly configured router can make calls choppy. We cover how to fix that in our call quality guide.
• Choice. Because the line is just data, you are no longer tied to the company that supplies your internet. You can use any VoIP provider, a cloud PBX, Microsoft Teams Phone, or a mobile-first setup.

What's being retired, and what isn't

There's a lot of confusion about "the copper switch-off". It helps to separate three different things that are happening at once.

1. ADSL broadband and CAN Radio

Telstra is exiting ADSL, the older broadband technology that runs over copper telephone lines, and retiring CAN Radio (also called HCRC or "radio phone"), a fixed wireless voice service used in remote places where copper wasn't practical. Customers on those services are being contacted and moved to alternatives such as 4G Fixed Wireless voice or satellite voice, with the retirement timetable running to 16 November 2027. Rural advocacy group BIRRR estimates CAN Radio supports around 9,000 remote properties and communities, many with no other voice option, so the replacement technology matters a great deal in those areas.

2. Retailers withdrawing copper voice

Some retail providers that used to resell copper phone lines have stopped doing so. For example, iPrimus (part of Vocus) stopped supplying home phone services over legacy copper lines from 1 March 2026, while stressing it was not switching copper off, just withdrawing its own product. If your retailer exits, you can usually take the same service directly from Telstra or move to a VoIP service.

3. The copper network itself

Outside the NBN fixed-line footprint (areas served by NBN Fixed Wireless or Satellite), copper voice continues. Telstra has said it is not exiting copper PSTN voice, and its Copper Continuity Obligation requires it to maintain eligible copper voice services in those areas. Advocacy groups describe that obligation as running until 2032. If you rely on copper in a regional area, you don't need to rush to VoIP just because ADSL is going.

Why businesses are moving faster than households

Households tend to keep the bundled phone port on their NBN modem, if they keep a home phone at all. Businesses have more reason to go further, because a modern cloud phone system does things a copper line never could:

• Ring the same number on desk phones, mobiles and laptops wherever staff are working.
• Add auto attendants, queues, call recording and reporting without buying hardware.
• Plug calling straight into Microsoft Teams, a CRM or a helpdesk.
• Add or remove users in minutes, and keep the same numbers when you move office.

The trade-off is that you take on responsibility for things the old network handled automatically: emergency calling details, power resilience and security against toll fraud. Our Triple Zero guide and security checklist cover those.

Regulation is catching up with all-IP voice

As voice has moved onto IP networks, Australian rules have been tightened in three areas you should know about:

• Emergency calling. After Triple Zero failures in 2023 and 2025, new legislation created a Triple Zero Custodian and new testing and outage rules from 1 November 2025. Read more.
• Scam calls and texts. Telcos must trace and block scam calls under an industry code, and since 1 July 2026 branded SMS sender IDs must be registered. Read more.
• Outage transparency. From the April–June 2026 quarter, the ACMA reports that new rules require providers to publish outage information in a consistent way.

What to do next

1. Work out what you have today: copper, NBN voice port, or a separate VoIP service.
2. If you're a business, list what you actually need from your phones (numbers, users, hours, call flows, integrations).
3. Compare the main approaches in our setup options guide.
4. Before you switch, check your network can carry good-quality calls. The bandwidth calculator is a quick first check.