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.

We recently had our copper line removed. Instead of paying £42 for slow internet I got 150mb for 23.99. Also mobile phones with unlimited data for £10 pm and boosted speeds.
In a power cut I have a mobile. If I was that rural I probably run a generator for other reasons tbh. They aren’t expensive as a plan b. Or even a power bank.

We have a 1920s house and I only got its first phone line installed in 2012 when we went to bt. It had never had one, bt loved that… but did honour the installation

I worry for the elderly in remote areas. My mum lives in a Devon village, her internet is down more often than not and mobile signal awful.

This is one of my aaarrrgghh topics - the replacement of an adequate form of technology by a more complex and less resilient one, i.e. landline by digital comms.
The advantage of landlines is that they have their own power, so you don't lose the ability to contact the outside world if the electricity is cut; and they are not dependent on iffy internet connections.
It's true that landline connections have largely disappeared, and this is usually framed as copper-hoarding old dinosaurs who just can't cope with the modern world, but nobody, young or old, was given the pros and cons of losing their landline before deciding to switch or not to switch.
If your phone is not just your phone but also your only connection to the internet, you are well and truly snookered if there's a powercut that lasts longer than the phone's charge.
'Keeping your fingers crossed' doesn't seem like a very responsible policy for something as crucial to national resilience as comms.

Exactly We are told to book GP appointments online Order prescriptions online but the internet just isnt reliable enough. My personal fave is when BT themselves or companies like UK Power Networks tell you to check their website when you have no internet. Its become the big lazy default setting to such an extent that they tell you to do this when they know you cant

I don’t think national resilience coms are all they tell us as our local area TV and radio mast a few years ago had a fire. It was out of action for nearly a year, it covered a large rural area. They always say listen to the radio in an emergency but in reality you don’t need many masts to fail to knock out radio for most of the nation.

We have poor mobile phone signal so use our landline still. We changrd to digital about a year ago, when we changed to full fibre broadband. It is excellent. BT supplied 2 cordless phones free of charge, the line is very clear, best of all if one of the handsets is in use, the other handset can be used, so when DD phones and can be on the phone for ages, the other phone is free for DH to use or for other incoming calls. I know if we need an alarm it may be a problem, but that is a problem that the alarm industry need to overcome. If we have a power cut and lose the internet, we will lose tge phone too, but that was the same with the old landline as we had cordless handsets before that needed mains power to work.

Don’t know why you quote BT it’s every single communication provider none of them pay
but ultimately it’s down to keeping prices low Customers want everything as cheap as possible

People don’t understand keeping the copper network with basic phone line isn’t a viable option
the technology from the 70’s that powers it has reached the end of it’s lifespan it’s no longer manafactuered the circuit boards and equipment cards are literally disintegrating the only spares is from stripping redundant equipment but that won’t last forever .the exchange building are enormous and the equipment uses a massive amount of power
previously the entire uk had copper service so a small amount of everybody raised enough to run and maintain it
now with people switching to fibre the revenue has fallen and doesn’t cover the cost of running it let alone investing in it

I see BT are going to be in our town centre later this month so the new fast fibre will probably be discussed.

My issue is you cant (not you personally) tell people to do everything online like GP appointments and ordering prescriptions and other important things and then leave people for days or more without the internet. Its trying to have it both ways, Ours went wrong during the first lockdown I was relieved that i dont shop online and i have no intention of starting People moan about the NHS still sending letters. Well this is part of the reason why!

AAAAAnnd TWO WEEKS after our engineer visit where he checked everything in the flat , the green box outside and even went all the way back to the telephone exchange in the town centre we keep losing internet again. Dropouts and potential multiple engineer visits show its not fit for purpose

Absolutely appalling serviceAbsolutely appalling service - complete broadband outage for over 24 hours and now told by a BT person - with considerable attitude - that there is a major service outage but they will not be able to give any update on when it will be fixed for 48 hours, as Openreach engineers do not report back to BT over the weekend. Unbelievable. Also automated system saying will be fixed in 2 hours - which BT person we spoke to admitted was a lie. Will be switching providers.
Date of experience: 18 May 2024

One benefit of fibre is that it'll work over much greater distances than copper can. The downside is that it'll take OpenReach years to roll it out everywhere and those who are in isolated, rural locations are going to be stuck for a while yet.

I think i will be sticking with letters and phone calls

Trouble is they all rely on Openreach

@HowardTJMoon i was told by the engineer who fixed our internet two weeks ago that fibre is more of a problem to fit in flats and they have had trouble securing the permission of housing associations.

So its letters and phone calls here all the way im afraid.

I do computer networking for a living. As a consequence I, and my colleagues, have had a lot of experience with Openreach. As one of my colleagues described it "If you closely examine any one thing that Openreach has messed up you'll find layer after layer of flaws, poor management and general ineptitude. And if you examine each of those you'll discover whole new realms of apathy, deficiency and inadequacy. It's never ending. Openreach is the first organisation to have achieved fractal incompetence. They are the Mandelbrot set of fail."

He's got a point.

We are rural. We have miles of copper cable, slow internet and no mobile phone signal. Open reach have no interest whatsoever in upgrading us

Im in a block of flats in a town