ADSL and PSTN Shutdown

[#1]

This may be of interest to anyone who has an ADSL broadband line.

Having an ADSL line myself and not appearing in the OR Fibre programme, I was keen to understand what the outcomes might be from the point of view of just the broadband service when the PSTN is withdrawn from Plusnet ADSL customers. Industry figures indicate around 2 million of us nationaly.

To this end I have spoken to several ISPs with different responses, as follows:

Plusnet – The line cannot exist in the absence of a PSTN telephone number. But cannot say what would happen to BB service but possibly the BB service would end as well.

BT - The line cannot exist in the absence of a PSTN telephone number. However if taking BT DV as well then service can be provided

TalkTalk – The line cannot exist in the absence of a PSTN telephone number. As a LLU supplier can allocate another telephone number if original is not available and provide service.

A&A - The line cannot exist in the absence of a PSTN telephone number. However A&A would get the line converted to SOADSL which will support BB only service.

This probably says as much about levels of staff training as anything but hopefully useful background.

Any additional thoughts on the subject welcome.

Every little helps, thanks in advance.

[#2]

@Archer  that looks like an accurate summary.

Note that in the case of A&A, if an ADSL line was moved to them and was converted to SOADSL, they would also be able to migrate the original landline phone number to their VoIP service, so theoretically you could still have a working home phone (assuming the DSL has enough upload bandwidth and manageable upstream latency).

.

[#3]

@Archer 

I believe PlusNet do not offer an SOADSL product therefore their call centre staff wouldn't be trained up on the subject.

Brian

[#4]

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from Broadband to Everything Else

[#5]

"The line cannot exist in the absence of a PSTN telephone number"

That is clearly nonsense as that is exactly what SOADSL is, where available ... the challenge is finding a supplier who will offer SOADSL where there is neither FTTC or FTTP.

I suspect that we are not going to see a clear plan for this before there is clarity on the final stages of switch off.  Until SOADSL becomes available, circuits will remain as they are.

[#6]

---

@Archer wrote:

BT - The line cannot exist in the absence of a PSTN telephone number. However if taking BT DV as well then service can be provided

---

I'm amazed that BT think that providing "Digital Voice" over SOADSL is ever going to be fit for purpose.

Yes, a decade ago I had Plusnet VoIP working on ADSL, but only with considerable effort tuning a QoS capable router,

however  BT "Digital Voice"  is locked to their "BT Smart Hub 2" that Google says doesn't support QoS.

The only way that would be acceptable, would be to have two copper pairs, one for DV over SOADSL, and other for broadband.

.

[#7]

---

@Townman wrote:

I suspect that we are not going to see a clear plan for this before there is clarity on the final stages of switch off.

I doubt if the final stages of the switch off can be achieved by the 31st January 2027 deadline,  having just read this -

BT claims its own data shows that 60% of Critical National Infrastructure customers in the UK currently have no plan in place to start migrating off the legacy analogue network.

from ISPreview - BT Urges Critical Infrastructure Providers to Get Off UK Copper Network 

.