What happened to BT Redcare, and what replaced it?

BT closed its Redcare alarm signalling service in 2025, after announcing its withdrawal in 2023. Systems that used Redcare had to be migrated to an alternative signalling provider — the main UK options being CSL, WebWayOne and Chiron — and any system still described as Redcare-signalled has either been migrated or is no longer transmitting.

Redcare was, for decades, the default UK alarm signalling path, and it was closely associated with the analogue phone network it grew up on. Its withdrawal was part of the wider retirement of that network.

If you have an older monitored alarm and have not heard from your provider about a signalling migration, that is worth chasing. The failure mode is quiet: an alarm whose signalling path has gone still sounds its siren locally, so a property can look protected while nothing is reaching an ARC at all.

The check is simple. Ask your monitoring provider, in writing, which signalling provider and path your system currently uses, and when it was last successfully polled. A monitored system is polled regularly by design, so they can answer that precisely.

Because this migration coincided with the phone network switch-off, some properties needed both a signalling change and a change of connection type at once. Treat any pre-2024 monitored alarm as needing confirmation.