LANDLINE to DIGITAL?

[glenleeegardens]

Sorry if this is the wrong thread but I can't find a suitable one. I am totally flummoxed about hearing landlines will no longer be a thing by 2025 and everyone will have to pay to change to digital. I can't afford to be paying out for changing over and getting a new system installed so is this even legal? Has anyone already changed over? How do you go about it and how do I know which providers are the best deal? It just doesn't seem fair to me to suddenly make everyone change over from perfectly good system to something new and possibly unreliable.

The technology is changing and all voice will be carried digitally.

I guessing you currently don't have broadband ?

You won't have to pay to have broadband installed. You won't have to do anything. You should not be asked to pay anything.

If you use any kind of alarm or telecare system , or have anything using the phone line that isn't a phone basically, you should inform your phone provider because there is a lot of work to ensure everything works after the change. In some cases your move to digital may be delayed whilst a solution is worked out

If you have broadband then you will plug your phone into the home router not the wall. This has implications for emergency phone use during a power cut. This only applies if you have at least one phone plugged currently into the wall - if you only have dect wireless handsets they don't work on a power cut. Anyway if this is a problem for you and you can't rely on a mobile signal you can ask to have a router with battery back up to provide this safety net

Most of the country is having fibre replace the copper. But you don't have to move to fibre if you only have voice on copper

Landline infrastructure is aging out, and it makes sense to move to newer tech. Fibre is reliable, discrete, and fast. Given time, I think landlines will go the way of the dodo. Digital landlines are just a stop gap, imo.

It just doesn't seem fair to me to suddenly make everyone change over from perfectly good system to something new and possibly unreliable. You've already been through it once with the phasing out of analogue TV

Your provider will initiate the process.

Haven't had a landline in years tbh

Midgetastic "If you use any kind of alarm or telecare system , or have anything using the phone line that isn't a phone basically, you should inform your phone provider because there is a lot of work to ensure everything works after the change. In some cases your move to digital may be delayed whilst a solution is worked out"

mum has an emergency alarm pendant

we have been told by BT and the alarm provider that everything will be fine - but they can't give an explanation of how it will be fine.

we are just hitting brick walls when we ask what their solution is.

lots of people don't have reliable broadband so they will be affected too, AIUI.

My friend currently has no broadband and no mobile signal within three miles of her home. She is diabetic (very poorly controlled) and suffers falls quite often. I am so worried about her if she cannot have a landline. We are in Scotland and have power cuts quite regularly when there is a storm.

My land-line is via WiFi. The WiFi is good but Internet is shit so every minute or so the land-line goes out. It's a total PITA and I can only make reliable calls on mobile via 4G. I would love to go back to real land-line!

It’s typical short termism, no actual thought to what may happen in long term power cuts etc. or a possible future cyber attack that renders mobiles useless.

Reliance on tech will be our downfall.
Cynics will say that it’s also another method of control.

This could easily be another Great Tech Move that turns out not to work. I know elderly people in non-rural areas with working broadband, where their new lines do not work. But still it's rolled out and the "glitches" are written off as an anomaly, an aberration.

It'll only be when someone couldn't call 999 and the worst happens, that it'll get looked into.

Do you really want to know the technical
Details? It will depend on the specific system in use - a lot of the common systems have already been tested with the new systems

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

@glenleeegardens I have recently been discussing this issue with the local MP - the number of calls from BT per day has been almost harrassement. I live in an area where some properties have less than 1mb broadband speed which is unstable particularly in bad weather. The government/BT have said for VOIP to work broadband speeds should be a minimum of 10mb.

The answers from BT to our concerns have been:

We do not have stable or fast enough broadband.
BT - fibre or superfast broadband will be installed to enable you to use VOIP.
Great when will you install it?
BT - as soon as the cost is agreed and you agree to pay. The exhange is quite a few miles from you, so we expect the install cost to be £NNNNNN
I am not paying to install it.
BT - that is fine we will direct your calls to your mobile
We do not have a mobile signal here
BT -It is mandatory for you to switch to VOIP
Then we will have no means of comms

There have been multiple calls from BT until we contacted our MP.

There will be targets each provider need to meet, hence the constant calls - they do not care about issues of rural or other properties.

The recent bad weather caused power cuts here for 3 days - we had to use an old style plus in phone which we keep for such emergencies. Even then the response from most of the authorities was to check their websites - extremely difficult without broadband or mobile signals!

We live in the countryside and get power cuts quite regularly. Mobile signal is very poor. We are not happy about the prospect of losing landline.

Please let your provider know

They can't fix what they don't know about but solutions do exist

Most people don't ever use their phone lines at all and to replace the current system with a modern equivalent would cost an astronomical amount

If you need super reliable voice with no mobile or broadband you can have it but it's pointless giving it to everyone when barely anyone uses it

You don't need working broadband to make this work

You do need non-copper lines though which many rural properties do not have.

I've just seen this on the Age UK website www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/money-legal/consumer-issues/changes-to-landline-telephones/#:~:text=For%20most%20networks%2C%20the%20changeover,will%20happen%20by%20December%202025.

If you only have landline or don't have reliable mobile you can demand that you are not migrated at present - you should be automatically excluded from this early stage so you are telling them to do their job properly

The solution to stay on copper for voice only service is being installed

Which is why if you are voice only you should be excluded from migration now because your solution isn't quite ready to go live

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 🤞🏽

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.