Landlines - National Switch from Analogue to IP

[WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll]

Does anybody know much about the plans for switching off the old PSTN/POTS/analogue telephone line system? There's info out there, but it doesn't seem to be very detailed, as far as I can see - mainly just telling you what will happen and not when or how.

Like many households, we have a fixed landline for our home broadband; but unlike many, we still use it for (occasionally) making actual calls and for receiving them from (mainly older) family members.

We have no great issue with ditching the analogue facility and switching to VoIP as standard, but we have family members who have heard just enough about it to worry about 'losing their phone line' but, as I say, not a load of useful information to reassure them.

I presume the idea is that every household that wants to still have a fixed phone line will by default end up with broadband. Ironically, it will probably be a lot of younger people, who have unlimited mobile broadband on their phones or tablets and thus don't bother with fixed home BB, who won't be affected by this.

It looks like they're planning to keep offering 'local' numbers associated with your own dialling code area - albeit 'spoofed' and no longer with any relevance to the service or connection other than to minimise unnecessary visible change and reassure people.

How will they charge for it? Will you be basically just sold a voice-only BB line (if that's all you want) for one fixed monthly fee, regardless of how many local/national/international calls you make - or will they preserve the illusion of calls that are 'more expensive' to provide - with associated pricing - to rip off the elderly?

I'm not really bothered about the change myself - it's a bit of a faff, but should then save us money overall. I just feel like they've thrown a worry bomb at many of the elderly who have no interest in (or real understanding of) the internet and may just panic about it all, when the time comes - I'm thinking of those who hear the word 'internet' and instantly associate it with complexity, scams and/or security and privacy issues.

Will it be seamless and present on the surface as no different to resolute non-internet users? I'm assuming that, once a house is newly online, telecom and other companies (and maybe also scammers) won't miss a trick in targeting people for constant upselling. It can be difficult enough now for those who want a phone line only and no internet or TV services active on it.

I'm also guessing that the government will, before long, 'lose patience' and remove the option of telephone helplines for non-internet-users to access central services - as they will no longer have the valid 'excuse' that they aren't online. A bit like the banks did with cheque books, when they told you that, if you had a cheque guarantee card, you also had a debit card and so no longer needed the facility to write cheques. In fact, this will give them the perfect excuse to complete their branch-free dream and force everybody to bank online, once everybody (technically) IS online.

I know the change makes sense and will be better longer term, but I do wonder if the full impact on many of the less-tech-savvy elderly has been properly assessed. We have family members who are already worried about it. I think one particular worry will be that, if you have a power cut and no mobile phone, you will lose the ability to call anybody - or, presumably, to use a lifeline help service. They've said that battery back-ups will be available for this scenario, but considering how many older folk who have got themselves/been given a mobile don't really see the need to get the habit of keeping it charged and leave it in a drawer, I wonder how successful this will be overall.

Before anybody says, I realise that a great many older people are regular tech users and as comfortable with it as anybody else (if not more so; and, indeed, some younger people are not) - but these obviously aren't the people I'm thinking of here.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this - or any more practical info, insider knowledge of timescales etc.?

Sorry, that was long.

This is as much as I know - not much! 2025.

www.itpro.co.uk/marketing-comms/business-communications/360574/the-great-telephone-switch-off

I can't figure out how my parents alarm system, among other things, will work. They are replacing the intercom in our block of flats, i think to get ahead of this.

Friends in rural areas say their internet won't be able to do this. Will it be delayed maybe?

Also, doesn't it make everyone more vulnerable to hacking? Like in that Sapiens book.

I must go to bed befire I give myself nightmares!

I have heard of this but not really seen any information. I have a landline answermachine. I have a payg mobile just for teenagers to text me when out. I don't want businesses etc to know my mobile number and get Cold called etc

I was told about this by a BT engineer few months ago. Told me my new phone would cost £25. Why should i have to pay for that phone when they are the ones doing the upgrade? My neighbour has received 2 new phones, for free, and they don’t understand why as they are in a position to buy them. They don’t understand themselves!

There's another aspect of this that is a worry - at the moment the handset is powered by the 'phone line, so you can still use it in a power cut. This won't be the case when they switch to VoIP. I can this being a problem in rural areas with poor or no cellular cover.

My BT land-line has already gone. I was sent loads of emails/letters about plugging a new digital handset into my router which I didn't understand (my router is under my TV, do I sit on the floor in front of Emmerdale to make a call/charge it or is it a hands free?). As I didn't receive any handset or offer of one I've no idea, I'm now without a land line after 60 years. We both have mobiles but they don't know that. They call it progress.

@Billandben444 was your old hand set corded?

The Internet phones are cordless plonk on the base to charge it. Ours went when we got fiber. The other one just works like our previous phone plugged into a socket.

With so many having mobiles and power cuts being rare is it a huge issue if your house phone doesn't work in a power cut. Few have a corded phone that would power of the phone lines anyway.

As I understand it, they are forcing businesses to do it first to free up lines for households. our business has been inundated with cold calls for the past few years - finally getting ours sorted next month. Its being sold as a 'cheaper' option ie no initial outlay but as each extension has to have it's own licence, its costing us £96 a month rather than £55. we have cut down the extensions to the bare minimum. Apparently in a power cut I can use the app on my phone so we can still get calls into the business......... I hate this type of 'progress' as it seems designed to make big companies much richer at the expense of us little ones.

@Lockdownbear
The charger was plugged into phone socket and electric point but it was a hands free handset.

power cuts being rare

You do know we are heading into a winter energy crisis across Europe?

Mine had already been changed. BT gave me a new handset, but there was an option to get an adapter for your current handset instead. We kept our number.

The letters/emails they sent made it very clear that if the power goes, so does the phone line and asked us to contact them if we didn’t have mobile phones - not sure what they are doing for those people. There was something about alarm systems too, I will see if I can find one of the letters.

We live semi-rurally and have FTTP (BT gigafast), not sure if they migrated people on normal fibre broadband, I will ask around the village.

[quote Lockdownbear]@Billandben444 was your old hand set corded?

The Internet phones are cordless plonk on the base to charge it. Ours went when we got fiber. The other one just works like our previous phone plugged into a socket.

With so many having mobiles and power cuts being rare is it a huge issue if your house phone doesn't work in a power cut. Few have a corded phone that would power of the phone lines anyway.[/quote]
Yes, it is a huge issue. Sometimes power cuts aren't short. Our entire city was without power for 3 days due to storm Desmond a few years ago when the major sub station was flooded. For the following week we had power from mobile generators parked around the city which were intermittent and then when the substation came back there were lots of short term interruptions as each small area was put back onto it, sometimes tripping out larger areas.

We only had telephone because we had an old/simple "wired" phone in a drawer that we plugged in and could use.

By the way, Desmond also knocked out a few mobile phone towers (which require electric) so mobile phones/internet was also down for the first day for most and a couple of days for others.

For the first time in decades, there were queues of people at the few remaining telephone boxes on street corners!

I'm really hoping they will delay it and it's one of their ambitious targets that they don't really expect to hit.

I hadn't heard anything about this and will not be happy to lose my landline. I've had three power cuts this year already, one for 24 hours and was also without internet for several days a few months ago (and I live in a town in the SE not some remote rural hamlet) and was glad of my one remaining corded landline phone.

I’m with BT, and mine was switched over several months ago. Plenty of emails beforehand, with clear instructions on the switchover. My landline phone has a base unit plugged into the power supply, so even before the switch, it would have been inoperable in a power cut, so no real change.
I had to move the phone from its usual location on the kitchen side, to my computer desk on the opposite side, but BT do provide an adapter if needed.
Not sure how they will deal with anyone without BB.

I wouldn’t like this. I have virtually no network signal on my mobile in our house. If broadband goes down for any reason we won’t be able to use our mobiles. We have them set to Wi-Fi calling which is fine when the broadband is working. I’d still like to have the option of a landline for when broadband is down.

I might be being a bit thick, but I've heard nothing about this before now. How will it work for someone with no Internet?

Power cuts aren't that rare and only likely to become more common.

Sounds like I'm not the only one confused or with concerns, then.

With so many having mobiles and power cuts being rare is it a huge issue if your house phone doesn't work in a power cut. Few have a corded phone that would power of the phone lines anyway.

But my point was that many elderly people don't have mobiles - or do, but aren't really in the mindset of keeping them charged, on their person and ready to use. It will be a large proportion of those relying on a traditional landline who are also the ones without mobiles as backup.

Also, plenty of people do still have corded phones - I think it's a bit like with DVDs, where those in the 'mainstream' who only stream nowadays will frequently exclaim that nobody uses DVDs any more, but many, many people do - especially the demographic we're talking about.

There was the recent incident in the North East where a huge number of homes were without standard broadcast TV for a month or more. I think the majority of us probably view that kind of scenario as slightly irritating, but not that terrible, as most people have Sky/Virgin/streaming options available. Except that, for old folk who live alone - and may not be very mobile any more - and don't have access to any of that, it wasn't just a bit annoying: it was a devastating blow to their sanity and communication with the outside world.

Like with my earlier comments about bank branches closing, I think there's a real danger in mentally 'rounding up' the word 'most/many' and treating it as if it were 'all'. Some of the most vulnerable and least privileged can simply get left behind by people assuming that they - and their needs/preferences/comfort zones - either no longer exist or just somehow don't matter.

I don't know what became of it, but I recall a new bank 'innovation' from a few years back, where they were trying to find a way for the worried elderly - the major users of cheques - to keep using them, now that there were fewer and fewer bank branches to pay them into. Their solution was a way in which you would 'simply' have to sign something with an electronic pen and then transmit it using your home broadband ?!?!

Let them eat cake, indeed.

I agree OP
My parents have internet but struggle with their mobile phones.

On a totally unrelated matter, your username has given me an earworm....

We went back to BT for phone line and broadband recently and were told we couldn't have a physical landline, only VOIP.

Phone plugged into router and would have been fine aside from the absolutely awful service. Broadband speed and connectivity was dire to say the least so the phone line unreliable.
Gave notice within the cooling off period and returned to our previous provider. I don't have a landline now and use only mobile.

I've not heard of this! I work for the church and have dozens of elderly members many relying on emergency care lines, very few have broadband or mobile phones.

At home we don't have a landline but our broadband is of course through the landline.

We have bt cloud at work, I’m not fussed if we have it at home- our landline stops
Working in wind and rain anyway; rural on the side of a windy mountain in Wales- it doesn’t often work tbh but they won’t replace the copper cables presumably because of this- we have fibre for internet from a different box so I guess the switch would likely work out better for us.