LANDLINE to DIGITAL?

I work for openreach and have never heard of that speed
what’s the issue I’m surprised it’s stable enough to stay in sync at that speed
I presume your on adsl on a long line rather than fibre to the cab
what was the reason given for that so when you queried it

Which does not work if your broadband speed is 0.2mb

No you don’t you get your broadband over copper then you get your phone over the broadband supplied by copper

The storms that affect the electric system hit the phone system also

Not true. POTS is 48V DC powered from the exchange which have battery/generator backup, the handset does not need to be powered. VOIP needs to be powered at each end to work, hence why BT offer some people battery packs to keep their phone working.

I was told before switching I could keep my landline and its number.
But it never worked properly, and I kept being charged for it.

In the end I gave up the landline and number, and was refunded.

I think that's the aim: to get rid of landlines.

I think Fibre will soon become riddled with problems and have to be replaced, and will end up as obsolete as a dial phone.

I've just had to change my elderly mother's system over. It was a pain as they insisted on installing broadband even though she doesn't use the internet, and doesn't want to. Then they decided that the Voip line and the broadband were not going to go live on the same day (!) when I had travelled all the way there specifically to set it up for her.

And the stupidest thing is that the new broadband comes in on the old copper lines...

I am concerned too, OP.

We have frequent power cuts that also cut power to the nearest mast leaving us with no phone signal.

We had fibre to cabinet and took fibre to property when contract came up for renewal ( my DH didn’t actually take the time to understand why he was signing up for, but that’s another subject and I took over management. )

It has been a PITA as the old router was on the top floor, custom wired unseen throughout the house when we were renovating , which we could no longer use. The new router is now downstairs . The old router gave solid fast coverage throughout but we’ve had to buy a disc extender fo the new feed to get my DH’s PC to work upstairs. ( You can get these on subscription but I calculated it to be more expensive above very short term) The broadband speed records as fast but I notice a slight delay.

Anyway, to get back to the Voice. The fibre comes into the house low down via new cabling from the telephone pole opposite - it comes in at a different point from the copper wire telephone line. We assumed the Openreach engineer would take out the old copper wire from the pole to the house. He left it and said vaguely it would stop working at some point. so we’ve got two lines coming into the front of a small Victorian terrace, at different points.

The landline is still working, in and out on the copper wire. We tried to get it working via the new router by plugging in the DECT compliant base telephone as per instructions but to no avail. It’s not the biggest problem for us, we have a short term need for landline which should be solved soon. We also now have an unused telephone extender for the digital voice that is redundant at the moment. So we have the odd position of fibre broadband and copper wire telephone coming into the house.

I did ask the engineer what would eventually happen theoretically about houses in the street that I knew didn’t have broadband currently and didn’t want it but relied on landline and he said they would be supplied with a digital landline version. Who knows what exactly that would mean 🤷🏼‍♀️

Yes improvements could be made to the electricity system I’m sure to stop all the powercuts people get in rural areas. But if we are relying on this happening, it should be in place BEFORE the copper line is phased out, not afterwards (or as it seems not even on the plan!). And this issue is widespread across much of the country. It’s going to take a significant investment and take a long time to get the system up to scratch to stop these issues. I doubt that investment is gong to come but if it does it will still be years of the users outlined on this thread, before we see any change. It is very shortsighted and a plan that’s likely to result in deaths.

I have a digital phone system now. It's going to be utterly useless in a power cut. But hey-ho, progress, eh?

Environmentally it feels like a step back, but heyho.
We know weather patterns are changing and power cuts will often result but humph who needs to communicate with anyone during a power cut.
My hearing is pretty shot, I have fibre calling at work, I loath it, I often can't hear what the speaker is saying, and quite often there is a delay....a bit like the old landlines of 40+ years ago, or when calling an over seas line. But along with phasing out the combustion engine and changing from filament lightbulbs to shitty long life ones which only stay bright for a few weeks then give off a crappy half light for years, replacing car bulbs to LEDs (where the whole unit will need replacing rather than just a bulb), it's always half thought out. I mean it's so bloody obvious it's nothing to do with convenience or the environment and everything to do with money exchanging hands.
Always under the umbrella of technology or environment or some other codswallop.

The storms that affect the electric system hit the phone system also

Before my time but I think there was a move / significant investment to bury as much telecoms infrastructure as possible following the Michael fish storm/ hurricane

So you know that could happen with the electricity also to make it more reliable

Sometimes the geography of an area means when there is wind/rain it tends to get battered! I live in one of those areas and the electricity infrastructure and maintenance, especially in bad weather, is very good. The length of time the power cuts are for are normally due to how long it takes to reconnect all the lines which have been damaged. The recent storms, the power was lost in the first storm but the subsequent windy weather meant the engineers could not climb the poles to fix the lines due to safety issues.

The VOIP move is a good one in theory but the infrastructure needed for it to be a successful migration is not fully in place - cart before the horse situation.

@WhatNoUsername Exactly. And I understand a lot of people have poor signal across the country.

In the building I live in - like a spread out development - there are a couple of sections in the common parts where signal goes completely and we're near a mast.

To confuse me even more, I got told mum was already on digital - but the landline is connected to a phone point connected to a copper point thingy in the street.

The landline can be used in a power cut at the mo.

I think if I lived somewhere that had constant power cuts I'd be more annoyed with the power companies for the flaky infrastructure rather than blaming BT for no longer being able to provide an independently powered communications solution. And look at investing in a decent capacity home battery. There must be more annoying things about not having electricity than just the lack of comms.

As a less important aside I am so concerned about the quality of the digital landline calls. If it's anything like WiFi calling (which is such crap quality I've turned it off) then the digital landline will be completely useless. Not too much of a problem for me. I have a mobile phone which with a most of the time although the signals not great in the house, but will likely increase the isolation of the elderly.

@midgetastic "For example in some cases the connection will remain over copper and go to a special new box that is being installed at the exchange"

That's exactly the info I was hoping for, but we just got told that digital will go ahead as there's no way they are maintaining copper.

In terms of locals, there are several elderly people in the mile circle surrounding mum. I know two carers who don't drive and their clients are all in that circle.

I did wonder if that might be enough to keep a local copper connection but the staff at BT probably haven't got to specific localities yet. We decided to stop enquiring and worry when they get to us.

They will give her a battery but it only lasts a few hours. We have regular power cuts. They often last much longer than the batteries they plan to dole out. It's a poorly thought out plan and people will be harmed/die as a result.

It's not just the elderly and disabled with alarms, it's also people in rural areas who won't have batteries and have poor mobile reception.

During the big storm that took out a chunk of Scotland people lost power for DAYS. In a storm when people are likely to need emergency services etc. And we are only going to get more of these extreme weather events.

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

I can imagine it is a very time consuming issue and one I think does need to happen but over many years there have been various committments made by various companies and bodies to guarantee minimum speeds for people, especially those living rurally. What has transpired though has been pockets of areas have been ignored. The same is happening now, the small percentage of people this change really does cause problems for are essentially being told tough.

My rural area there are always wonderful PR opporuntities being made stating XX area now has super fast broadband - done for nothing more than PR and probably where it is an area for tourists. What is always missing from the PR is the rural area, where locals live and work is not considered viable for installation even though it is sometimes only a mile away.

I support tourists areas having good comms but such a change to VOIP, the switch should only have beeb started once everyone no longer had copper wiring.

I thankfully have managed to protect my parents from being switched, having been told by their provider it is mandatory - they too have slow internet speeds and no mobile signal. There are going to be many people switched to meet targets without a thought to the problems it causes.

It is good some charities are catching on to this but the problem is not only affecting the elderly and those with health issues, plus the numbers involved are not small.

My mum has a landline with Virgin. About a year ago they switched her over to digital when she had problems with her - didn’t cost her anything she just needed a digital handset.

Fibre is not reliable. It goes off every time there's a power cut. Which are very frequent in lots of areas, usually rural, usually the same areas that also have poor mobile phone reception.

I think it's a huge mistake to turn off the copper landlines which are generally very reliable and don't rely on a separate electricity connection to work.

Our power goes off all the time. The last time it happened the mobile phone tower also went down. The only way I was able to contact anyone (including U.K. power to find out what was going on). is because I still have a copper phone line. Otherwise I'd have had no idea what was happening and have driven to my local office (I was trying to what day) pointlessly as their power was also out. Had I have had an accident at home, I wouldn't have been able to contact anyone without my copper phone line. It's a disaster waiting to happen imo.

Who pays to fibre up remote ( or difficult to reach ) households is really a separate question to the move to digital voice

Personally i don't see why a private company should be forced to take on the full financial cost of connecting every last person. It's the equivalent of saying that you shouldn't have to pay more for travel insurance if you have loads of heath problems. However I do agree that the cost shouldn't be passed to the remote households either as reliable internet is pretty essential for modern life.

It's a mega difficult thing to do - the first tests were done around 2005ish and it's taken that long to get to this stage . International standards on the internet had to be developed to make it all work

There are ~30 million lines to shift, so if only 0.1% have problems. that's still tens of thousands of problems

That doesn't solve the problem though as internet access is also needed, with the speeds we have here, even now only 1 person can be on the internet at once, if it rains the connection is lost. To eventually move to VOIP would just not work - the plan if for copper lines to only be used as a stop gap, but if open reach will not pay to replace the copper lines, the move to VOIP will leave many in a worse situation than they are now.

I am not against VOIP per se, but if the move is to be made then the infrastructure must be in place for the entire country. Providers should not be allowed to exclude people due to their geographical location or expect them to pay vast amounts of money to install digital solutions because they have decided copper wiring is no longer needed.

Thank you to @midgetastic . I really hope your confidence in their willingness/ability to assist the many people for whom this is a real worry is not misplaced 🤞🏽