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.

@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.

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 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!

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.

So has the landline connection actually gone for them?

Seems so, although was working earlier.

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.

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

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.

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.

@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.

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

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.

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?

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

Good luck with digital voice then,

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

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

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

I have two separate landline numbers, one of which also has broadband on it too. BT has not yet switched this bit of London to Digital Voice and the later it happens the better as far as I am concerned even though in theory I will be sent a Hub 2 and will be able to plug the corded landline into the back of the new Hub 2 (if only it were that easy......)

Having never had a landline problem since moving here in the 90s, l ast month one landline was completely down for ONE MONTH. It is now back. It was a major network outage. I have yet to have compensation from BT.

(Our area does not yet get fibre to the premises either and broadband in this bit of London cuts out at least once a day for a minute or two and BT/ openreach cannot fix it - happens to neighbours too - indeed I had to raise £12k 10 years ago from neighbours to pay a third of cost to get right power to the local box to watch TV over the internet )

It's pretty shit, to be honest. We live in a rural area with very poor 4G and mobile signal and rely on the WiFi. Our WiFi was out for a week recently, and we couldn't use the landline either as ours has changed to digital. We had to drive half at least half a mile to get/send messages, report the fault etc.

I think that the government should intervene on this, the implications are such that the timescale is too short.

If they want to do this shit ,,,,,,,,, engineers will have to work weekends and bank holidays, The apos was missing. As the internet is suppossed to be so bloody important these days BT should be part of the 24 hour society not get to opt out because they are too tight to pay for weekend/bank holiday working

Saturday part of normal rosta? Not what ive been told

Crap idea especially for those of us in rural areas with crap signal. I'd much prefer to stick to my landlines. Imagine trying to dial 999 & no signal.

Our internet is currently dropping out every two mins Been slow for days People in the next street are having same problem