The End of Analogue Phone Lines
Just thought I would flag up that Openreach (BT) intend to switch off analogue phone lines by 2025. I appreciate that a lot of people don't bother with home phone line as they can manage with their mobile phones. Landlines will switch over to VOIP which means they they will work through the Internet. How quite this will work for those that don't currently have an internet connection is being worked on but it may mean everyone in that position will get a minimum internet package which allows the phone to work. I am sure than many that this applies to will be older people so it will have to be sympathetically explain. An interesting article here on the subject End of Analogue Phones Thought it might be of interest.
David
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Would think you will simply have to buy a digital phone
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It's not the handset it's the telephone line which is currently over copper to the exchange. I don't know if people might need new phones to work on the new system?
David
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For the speeds needed for a Digital phone, copper would be fine
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Have you read the link I provided? It seems that all the copper lines that currently service the consumer telephone lines will be disconnected for telephone connections and phones will move over to using VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) via the internet. It's not something that is new as many companies have been employing this method for some years as a cost saving measure.
David
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One big advantage of the current system is that your standard plug in phone (not the wireless ones) work in a power cut. If large scale these can take out local cell towers, meaning no mobile.
Whilst all for progress, in this respect it does seem a bit retrograde.
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Ofcom have a big detailed section on the switch. We still use our land-line a lot but we won't need to worry about trees falling on the wires in future.
We're only just getting reliable internet connections locally. In a power cut you'll still need a fully charged mobile phone everything else will stop working including Voip.0 -
Steve
That is certainly the case but I suspect the infrastructure for the current phones is getting old and with the advent of Fibre I don't suppose BT want to maintain or replace it. The evidence is that fewer and fewer people are relying on landlines anyway. I suppose it depends on how reliable they can keep the internet system?
David
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The other thing I wonder about is what they are going to put up to cover for the lost revenue. If I use VOIP I can make calls all over the world for next to nothing, other than I need access to the internet. However, if I was to use my land line it would cost an arm and a leg.😂
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BT?🙄, BT are great until things go wrong then they’re a pain to get in for a fix☹️. I left them due to me being off line over a week whilst openreach kept letting me down. I hope independent suppliers will have engineers & not a monopoly for BT/OR. There’s a good reason why BT-openreach are never classed as good+.
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That’s probably because they are pushing HALO. On that if our internet goes down they switch my mobile to unlimited 4G and send a mobile router to use until sorted. I wasn’t really bothered but they gave it to me for the same price as what we were paying, if we signed for another 18 months.
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Over the past few months, our little seaside town has gone through the massive disruption of having fibre cable brought to everyone's house (or just outside) - indeed it's still going on. When I enquired with our ISP, I was told I could have super-fast broadband for less money than I'm paying now. The downside was, that we would loose our landline.
Coincidentally, talking to an Openreach engineer, working in our road, he told me that, so far, the take-up had been virtually zero because most people didn't want to loose their landline.
Although we both have unlimited minutes on our mobiles - as with the landline - I am reluctant to loose the landline, despite the fact we don't really need it. It's probably going to take a few more years before not having a landline becomes 'acceptable'.
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Our daughter in NZ has her landline via the Internet. They turn their Internet off overnight, always have, and only turn on when they require it. We only learned this when trying to ring their landline getting no reply but knowing there should be someone there. The phone appeared to ring so that was no assistance to us! Apparently the landlines doesn't ring if Internet isn't connected but the caller doesn't get the equivalent of an engaged tone so has no idea why its not being picked up 😤
I don't know if this system will work in the same way - but seems a step backwards??
Our mobile signal indoors is unreliable so when renegotiating our cable contract we kept free anytime calls. As we have our preference number as the landline. Plus lots of folk we rarely talk too only have the address and phone number from when we moved in almost 36 years ago 🤣.
We too have been inundated with the company works since 1st lockdown upgrading the street systems.
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The first BT router we had, when still on standard speed broadband, had a VOIP phone which slotted in a cradle at the front to charge. We used to use it to phone OH’s relatives in South Africa and my sister in France. It still costed and showed on your phone bill, but was substantially cheaper than using the land line.
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I take back what I said about trees falling on copper wires, of course the wires will still be there unless you are cabled to the door. Our new cabling which is isn't up and running yet gives us the option, more expensive as well to cable up a long drive way the other option is to connect at the road to overhead copper.
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I doubt they’ll hit targets they’ve agreed to-they never do. Govts have a history with giving bad companies further contracts, remember carillion🤷🏻♂️☹️.
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I currently have two internet connections, one FTTC and one high speed FTTP direct fibre connection to the house (I am sitting on the fence at the moment!) With the direct high speed fibre connection the modem you get includes a phone connection which routes your calls through the fibre. However there is a monthly cost for a call package just as there is with a standard BT phone so I am not convinced it will be any cheaper? As has been mentioned there are Apps that bypass the need to use a phone to anywhere in the world like Facetime and Whatsapp. I think the biggest impact of this change will be to those in the older generation who don't use the internet and just want a phone line. As the article suggests it looks as though there will be a minimum fibre internet service to those people with just enough bandwidth to service their phone. It may be prudent to also have a mobile phone because if the internet goes down there will be no service. The old phone system is powered from the exchange so providing there is no fault on the line works regardless of power to the premises.
David
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You would have to have a corded phone at present, anything cordless might lose battery power. I will be surprised if this system is truly in place by 2025. I believe the sales of "old style" phones is stopping this year but there is a long way to go connecting everyone up.
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We have VOIP - using our old landline number. There's a setting that if there's a power cut the calls divert to a given mobile number. It can also be set to ring the normal handset and the mobile all the time (useful if away?) but that was too many things ringing at once for me (my watch also rings!).
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We have a land line which has two phones connected one in the bedroom and the one used the most in our "sitting room" and as now and getting worse ,the downs stairs answer phone and handset only rings in from a mobile or a local exchange number ,if we get a call from another landline from a different area(many of our friends still use them
) it only rings on the extention phone in the bedroom ,the BT man we know is flummoxed
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I can imagine this could get quite difficult. In our current set up we have cordless phones in sitting room and bedroom and a fixed line in OH study, so if phone rings we are always in reach of it. How would that work with a mobile, we never carry it around the house with us! We rarely (unless away) ever use our mobiles for anything other than the odd text message. OH would never hear his either, unless right next to him. Also, our mobile signal is quite poor from all providers in our village, and data almost non-existent, and that just 8 miles from York.
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