Digital Switchover 2025 - End of Landlines just 2 years away

[OldBoyScout]

I first heard about this on Channel 5 Jeremy Vine a couple of days ago. Shocked that something that will affect most people in the UK in just 2 years time, perhaps seriously, has not been more widely publicized. It seems that Openreach are planning to replace the old copper wire phone network with fiber broadband and are intending to cease all landlines in 2025. It seems that many people who are aware of this have serious concerns about equipment and services that they depend on, as traditional phones, alarms, answerphones etc will not work on the digital network without adaptation. There are concerns about reliability, costs and how people will cope if they are not good with technology. 

[PetrolDave]

For me the elephant in the room with Digital Voice is what happens when there is a power cut, because it relies on mains power to a router or analogue adapter you cannot make or receive calls.

 

You can request a battery backup, but that only lasts 1 hour - so if you're in a mobile 'not spot' you can't call the energy provider or any emergency service.

 

This isn't a theoretical problem as many people who were affected by the recent winter storm didn't have power for days and some were in mobile 'not spots' and had to drive several miles for their mobile to get coverage.

 

IMHO the obligation on BT to provide emergency call coverage should not have been cast away so easily.

[Norton Ian]

The Government seem clueless about most forms of technology and just swallow what the tech companies tell them and then throw all their eggs in one basket. How many times have they been ripped off with failed IT systems? BT/Openreach in particular have had a very easy ride. 

[Aspman]

Actually that date is the finish deadline for the switchover, it's been happening for quite some time.
At previous job I was involved quite heavily in the switchover since this affected personal alarms for old folk and the vulnerable and there has been a sizable project underway for a good 5yr.
BT/Openreach has been quietly switching over exchanges all that time. There is a planned progression but also if any analogue exchange failed they were switched rather than repaired.
 

[robt100]

On 08/09/2023 at 09:43, Aspman said:

Actually that date is the finish deadline for the switchover, it's been happening for quite some time.
At previous job I was involved quite heavily in the switchover since this affected personal alarms for old folk and the vulnerable and there has been a sizable project underway for a good 5yr.
BT/Openreach has been quietly switching over exchanges all that time. There is a planned progression but also if any analogue exchange failed they were switched rather than repaired.
 

Slight side-topic question. But have they got a solution apart from GSM based alarms? (Used to work in the personal alarm sector myself dealing with Tunstall, Tynetec, Doro and Legrand)

[Aspman]

I’m a few years out of it now but the main solution was a digital bridge in the home allowing the old kit to be connected to the digital line. All usually had a multivendor cellular backup.

 

 

[fabdavrav]

Ok so I'm still on copper overheads...I know the nearest exchange is fibre...so are they going to now dig up all the roads to install fibre into the houses & before 2025yr??.....

[@Lee]

5 minutes ago, fabdavrav said:

Ok so I'm still on copper overheads...I know the nearest exchange is fibre...so are they going to now dig up all the roads to install fibre into the houses & before 2025yr??.....

Openreach were already doing OH fibre when I left in 2018 so I suspect they'll just use the existing OH routing. No difference in speed or anything. 

[PetrolDave]

11 hours ago, fabdavrav said:

so are they going to now dig up all the roads to install fibre into the houses & before 2025yr??.....

My new house is on an estate that was built with FTTH, BUT my GF lives in Bradford-on-Avon where there is rotating chaos as the roads are dug up (mostly by Gigaclear contractors) to lay fibre to EVERY property. The chaos they cause is a matter of much "comment" locally and even more frustration as they keep returning to roads where they have not completed the work when they first dug up the road.

 

Oh and they don't always cleanup their spoil - they left a pile of road rubble outside my GFs house which only got taken away after a complaint to the local council and Gigaclear.

[Stonekeeper]

12 hours ago, fabdavrav said:

Ok so I'm still on copper overheads...I know the nearest exchange is fibre...so are they going to now dig up all the roads to install fibre into the houses & before 2025yr??.....

 

 

I may be wrong (i have been before)

 

But

 

I don't think the fibre being put down in your road/pavement is for your current provider to use.

 

It is a competitor

 

We had  city fibre dig up all our streets and then leaflet drop us to switchover

We now have another firm erecting dinosaur telegraph poles and running a cable in the air and doing the same.

 

My understanding is the your copper cable will not be changed to your house  unless you pay for it and BT and suppliers who use their network will carry on supplying your broadband as they do now, fibre to the street and copper to the house.

 

The telephone will  be disabled unless it runs through the router with an adaptor.

 

Your existing landline phone will still work after the switchover, the only difference will be that your phone connects to your broadband router via an adapter. While the change in infrastructure is a huge undertaking, most end users won't have to do much. In fact, the official guidance from Ofcom is that your phone provider should supply you with an adapter. The four main phone providers- BT, Virgin, Sky, and TalkTalk- have all said they will do so, and you can find links to their statements on the switchover process at the end of this article. These four companies provide 85% of the UK's landline service. If you are in the remaining 15%, we recommend contacting your provider to find out if they will be supplying customers with adapters too.

Edited 9 December, 2023 by Stonekeeper

[PetrolDave]

1 hour ago, Stonekeeper said:

Your existing landline phone will still work after the switchover, the only difference will be that your phone connects to your broadband router via an adapter.

With BT this also means that if you have a Home Hub they have to replace it with a Smart Hub as the Home Hub does not have an analogue phone socket.

 

My GF recently had this swap done by a BT "Engineer" who knew nothing about the other package BT had sent of a new BT TV (now EE TV) box and another Smart Hub - so they are both still boxed as delivered and sitting in a cupboard!

[Stonekeeper]

2 minutes ago, PetrolDave said:

With BT this also means that if you have a Home Hub they have to replace it with a Smart Hub as the Home Hub does not have an analogue phone socket.

 

My GF recently had this swap done by a BT "Engineer" who knew nothing about the other package BT had sent of a new BT TV (now EE TV) box and another Smart Hub - so they are both still boxed as delivered and sitting in a cupboard!

 

Thanks for the info

 

I was thinking i was going to be supplied with some gizmo that the phone plugged into to change the plug to ethernet

 

Changing everyone's router will prove expensive?

[nta16]

When I renewed my BT broadband contract with landline I had to go "Digital Voice" (new type of hub phone instead of old school phone), no choice no problem for me but it might be for those with personal health alarm systems.

 

I had the BT Smart Hub 2 already (and BT Youview tv box which hasn't been switched on or connected for years). - https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/learn-about-broadband/different-types-of-bt-hub

 

I didn't know what Dect was. - https://www.gigaset.com/en_en/cms/phones/dect.htm

 

The new package included a BT Voice phone and charger base, the phone's shape and size makes it impractical to carry around like I sometimes did with my 25+ year old BT Siemens cordless phones.  And I don't think the new phone would stand being dropped on the concrete path and twice left outside overnight in the rain and being left to air dry out (no rice was used) like one of my BT Siemens cordless was.

 

I've heard on consumer programs (BBC Radio 4) for a couple of years now about problems with switch over for people without computers and broadband but landline phones only and personal health alarm systems and certainly the last one I heard a while back BT were still having problems sorting some of the issues but gawd knows what they were playing at and what level of "engineer" they were repeatedly sending out.

 

Having the new hub (?) phone light up did show when the broadband went down, for a matter of seconds by then the hub has to go through its process, it's not very often but I've probably never noticed before getting this phone it happening.

 

Without broadband and mains electric connection you are without the phone unless you have a mobile phone (that's in reception and battery isn't flat) and not everyone has a mobile phone, or, hard for most to believe, wants a mobile phone.

 

To be fair, a neighbour who read it in the Daily Mail told me about this digital switch over a number of years ago, more than two years IIRC(!?).

 

Unless things have changed since I last heard many elderly people may have lots of issues and problems with this switch over.