Customer Testing in Digital Voice World

[#1]

Thinking about the digital voice / SOTAP world that is coming. (Fibre/SOGEA is way down the road, literally, for me).

Currently there are some basic diagnostics that can be undertaken by a customer to check the line. Eg Is there dial tone?, Does the quiet line test indicate noise on the line?

In the DV world has anyone any idea what diagnostics will be available to the customer, I can’t think of any?

If there are none, then maybe us customers who will rely on a copper pair will just have to take whatever we get and trust Plusnet.

Any thoughts?

[#2]

I don't really understand this one. If you are on copper completely, or FTTC where you have copper from the cabinet to your property,  then you will have fibre completely to the property and no copper if you go FTTP.  SOGEA normally refers to FTTC and any tests you can do before you get it are basically useless as they have no relevance to the installation of FTTC, and even less so for FTTP.

[#3]

For ADSL and FTTC with a voice service it is possible to do a Quiet Line Test to check if there is noise on the line, and also to check if there is a dial tone.  Lack of a dial tone or crackles on the line are a good indication of a line fault which needs to be fixed and would lead to performance issues.

With SOTAP and SOGEA you still have an ADSL or FTTC service respectively but there isn't any voice service available, hence no dial tone and no Quiet Line Test.  I believe the OP is asking how we could do that kind of test in these circumstances.  I don't know that there is a way, and I'm guessing by the silence from others that no one else does either.

[#4]

@pjmarsh
I agree. The reason why on copper, including FTTC phone, is that it breaks out into PSTN. However when using copper for digital there is no way to my knowledge to check using an analogue device. Over a decade ago when the organisation I worked for went from fibre to virtually local loop copper when BT hiked the price of Fibre, BT staff kept on pinching our lines as they would do an analogue test in the exchange and would hear nothing as it was digital. Part of the issue was BT's refusal to train their much older technicians on digital as they appear to have thought it was a waste of money. We also had VoIP, internally we were OK but couldn't make external calls. Luckily we had a radio fall back backup until the lines were back up.