LANDLINE to DIGITAL?

I’m one of those shit engineers as you so politely put it

Saturday is part of our normal rosta and the service provider won’t pay the extra for Sunday and bank holiday working

We are very rural and too far from the cabinet to get decent Broadband so we have a type of beamed broadband from a base station a few miles away. We don’t have a phone line, I didn’t see the point as they are being phased out. I am acutely aware that if the power goes off I won’t be able to power the router and will have no means of contacting anyone unless I run batteries or a genny as there is no mobile phone signal in the house. The wireless broadband base station near me has 3 days battery back up.
I think it’s going to be like smart meters and fibre broadband will probably be replaced by wireless in the near future. Personally I’d have kept the copper phone lines just for their simple reliability

Good luck with digital voice then,

https://x.com/bt_uk/status/1786382173202792698

If they want to do this shit engineers will need to start working weekends and bank holidays not leaving it till the next normal weekday when things go wrong

Update is that relative's phone connection is now working having had an Openreach engineer out to set it all up. 48hours with no landline for a vulnerable person is not acceptable though and we have made a complaint. Also contradicts the stated policy:

^^ BT won’t be proactively switching anyone who falls under the below criteria, where it has this information available:
• Customers with a healthcare pendant
• Customers who are over 70
• Customers who only use landlines
• Customers with no mobile signal
• Customers who have disclosed any additional needs^^

Are call centre staff incentivised to persuade customers to swap?

When I read that the phones operated over VOIP, I, stupidly, expected to pay for the broadband package, but nothing extra for calls, as they are made over the internet. We tried a VOIP phone 20 odd years ago at our business, but although it worked ok, the internet speed was quite slow, which made it unreliable, but there was no extra charge for phone calls. So we used it for the occasional overseas call and it was good. BT charge an extra £8 per month for a call package, which still keeps the cost lower than Talk Talk was. We have had it since August, and so far no problems at all.

Anything over a 10 mile cable run will struggle to be stable
12 miles I’d be surprised it’ll work
it’s the limitation of the technological

@Scrowy wow, that sounds really poor. I live in a very remote location as well but we have full fibre (to the door) and a 4g mast on the hill behind us. Maybe I should stop whinging about VOIP.

Its clearly a lottery, some remote areas are well served and others are left behind. Not fair at all.

We get around 0.8 - 1mb download speed. Our copper line crackles when we use the phone and in bad weather the broadband cuts out if someone uses the phone.

Openreach have been out many many times to patch it up but ultimately we are at the end of a very unstable, exposed geographically, copper line. We've no access to a fibre connection and no idea if we will be included in project gigabit yet and in the meantime we can't access other voucher schemes as we 'might' be included in project gigabit.

I'm trying to run a farm business and even simple web based things like registering the cattle on BCMS or using cloud based accounting for making tax digital or mumsnetting is painfully slow. Forget trying to join a Microsoft Teams meeting!

We've absolutely no 4g/5g data connection to boost the slow broadband (this is the only solution BT seem to be able to offer us currently) no mobile phone signal on any provider. We use WiFi calling on our mobiles already but it can be patchy and you have to stay close to the router to avoid getting cut off.

Rural areas that are already struggling with being left behind digitally are being completely forgotten about in this switchover.

I'm extremely fearful that when our time to be switched comes that we are going to just get a shrug of the shoulders from the powers that be and it will be our problem to fix.

Same here. Except we're already on VOIP phone, we were told there was no other option when we moved here. Remote area, we get superfast broadband which is great but during power cuts we're effectively cut off. The 4g mast usually works for about 30 mins when the power goes off, after that we have no way of contacting anyone. Nearest phone box is 3 miles away, not sure that would work in a power cut anyway.

It now goes straight to voicemail now. Was working around 11am when called me and then BT. Might be a coincidence.

Do you mean it's working at the moment?

I'm so confused by all this. Hopefully a consumer watchdog will pick up on it.

Seems so, although was working earlier.

So has the landline connection actually gone for them?

Having issues with BT enforcing this switch on elderly vulnerable family member despite guidelines stating they will not. No mobile alternative and little notice of the change potentially leaving no functional landline until the new equipment is set up. Conflicting advice from BT as to why new router etc was sent out of the blue with the call centre initially saying it could be ignored and suddenly giving no choice.

@HannibalHeyes Ah, I see

@Lincslady53 That's interesting

I stopped running a landline years ago but when I moved, package prices were all basically the same and BT included a couple of phones.

I haven't bothered to fix them but I suppose they might be handy and at some point I should try them. I wonder how much leccy they'll use, as opposed to frequent charging of mobile. Or how much it costs to ring mobiles...I should probably look at them at some point!

We are both 70, so often referred to as 'ederly'. We switched to BT digital last year, we need a landline as we live in a village with crap mobile coverage. Yes, if we have a powercut the phone won't work, but we had cordless landline phones before, abd guess what, they didn't work in a power cut either. BT gave us 2 new phones free of charge, would normally cost about £80. We also had full fibre broadband installed as part of the package. The package is about £5 a month lesd than we were paying for slower broadband with Talk Talk. We had a couple of billing issues in the first couple of months, but their help line was answered quickly and the issues were sorted. The digital phones are very clear, use just the same as a nirmal landline phone. Best bit? We have 2 phones. If one is in use, the other phone can be used for another call or to receive an incoming call, as if we had 2 landlines. I know there are issues with alarms and safety devices for disabled/elderly but I am sure the manufacturers of these will soon work a way of surmounting these problems. So overall, we are well pleased so far.

@HannibalHeyes This is smart meter territory again - the "we will only switch/give you the best deal if you have a smart meter/use VOIP". This is incorrect from providers yet still they say it.

Because we had to change her provider because the previous one had badly let her down. If you change provider, they will only offer a digital service.

No fibre and 0.2mb in the average speed we get. Yes it is a long line, and it is never stable. Openreach have been very good in trying everything to make it stable enough to use. It can get to 1mb on a good day but not often.

The issue is a rural location, surrounded by mountains. No line of sight for using other solutions and no mobile signal. The annoying issue is areas close by, as far as rural can be close by, have fibre and other more stable connections.

I'm concerned that when the broadband goes down (when it's very wet or windy it can be compromised) we will have no way to make emergency calls or check on my mum now she's alone and almost 80. My mobile signal is terrible, we looked at all providers and none promise a signal inside the house, currently zero signal for mobile calls at all. I've always kept an older plug in phone for emergencies as the cordless sets don't work during power cuts and I've always worried that we would be completely unable to make or receive calls. Unless they do something about the appalling mobile signals in rural areas many will have the same issue.

So why did it need changing please?

Does this mean they will still have copper being maintained please?

I have a digital line which was initiated by BT and it was a simple case of plugging the line into the back of the router. Our mobile signals are very weak and we can only use them in the house if we use WiFi calling. So during the many power cuts we get here we would have no means of making a call in an emergency. Sounds like I need to apply for a battery pack ?

My parents are 88 this year and dont have internet just a land line.