Phasing out home phones

[#1]

Considering the scale of this operation there is very little clear publicity about it for the less tech savvy , (or at best there's a lot rumours and here say ) The analogue  TV was switched off to great fanfare and we were inundated with advertising and  and information.

  Round our area there is a lot of work going on with fibreoptic contractors feeding new cable to the foot of the telegraph pole carrying the overhead lines . Looking at the one ours is fixed to they have a new cable pulled through and temporarily  tied to the pole with a terminal box on the end with the name fibrus , are they actually going to replace our old copper overhead lines with fibreoptic ones , someone told me they were  the other day ?

I have fibre BB but it's only fibre to the cabinet at the end of the street  like many people . Prior to this I had heard the copper lines to the house were staying put after the switch off ? Are they  and if so why are they running fibre to the telegraph poles , will it then be fibre to pole rather than fibre to cabinet? If they leave ours as is with copper from telegraph pole to house , can you still use an internet voice phone with the HUB2 router for instance . I assume so because it's connected to the internet?

It seems you may have to switch providers to get phone and internet so it makes you wonder why you'd even bother with a home phone if you live in an area with mobile phone coverage , and in a power cut your router would be as useless as a cordless base unit any way and the option to plug a landline in gone for ever.

Any information appreciated

[#2]

@Rik13 'Fibrus' is an altnet. or a  private non-BT fibre optic company - I don't know whether they also provide internet, as some of these new companies do, or whether they wholesale the network to established ISPs.

If you take a Full Fibre product with whoever provides the internet connection, they may or may not disconnect your copper line, but shouldn't as that is Openreach property, and only they can handle it - officially.

If you go with FF, it is Fibre to your house - i.e all the way. The Hub2 is not VoIP-enabled, so no, you couldn't use that for internet phone service.

[#3]

@Rik13 

There is a serious safety issue with this switch over, one that is not being widely publicised.  A consequence of turning off the PSTN phone system is that almost everyone with a landline will lose the ability to make emergency calls in the event of a prolonged power cut. 

There are battery backup systems being offered by BT to their most vulnerable customers, but as far as I know these are not being offered by other providers.  They are also a false security, as we have found that our FTTC cabinet fails about 30 minutes into a power cut, as that's as long as its battery lasts.  We can't get a mobile signal, so if we needed to call for help, or call the emergency services, then we'd not be able to.

This is a stark contrast to the PSTN, where big battery banks and even back up generators ensured that the landline phone system remained operational for a long time in a power outage, as long as the phone cables weren't damaged.  Those that can get a mobile phone signal may not be much better off, either, as in many areas the mobile phone masts don't have back up power either.

This is something that is starting to gain attention, a few weeks ago there was a meeting in our village hall to discuss the problem of the village not being able to call for help if the power goes off.  Lots of ideas bandied about, but no one had any solution.  The meeting concluded with the view that we each had to come up with our own way of dealing with not being able to call for help.  Best suggestion was from an amateur radio chap who suggested that they may be able to help.  Apparently they have a volunteer network that may be able to provide emergency communication.

[#4]

@JSHarris 

I don't think people realise the implications of these changes  , in fact a lot of people I mention it to, know nothing about it . Particularly if you live somewhere with poor cell phone coverage . It might be an idea for those communities  to have CB radios and a 12v battery on hand , they are cheap enough and , any local radio club will have members with the basic gear to help set it up if needed , if enough people had one there would be a good chance of someone hearing you during a power cut. 

Yes the phone masts require power too as you say , radio amateurs can already able be made use of by emergency services as they have equipment and access to more bands which may work better or over greater distances and not restricted to line of sight like the  bands  the police etc use locally .

It's all very well having a world where everything relies on the internet , but we seem to be burning all our other bridges . We have been pushed into online banking then close the branches close the shops for online ones soon the phones are going online . Great until the power goes off.

[#5]

... and won't be able to go anywhere when petrol cars have been phased out, and the electricity grid is rationed to ever shorter periods during the day for charging the obligatory EVs

[#6]

I think it will be difficult to people to grasp especially older people who struggle with/refuse to use email or the internet. I run the comms for a pensioner group and the number of times I am told "I don't do the internet" a fair number of them are younger than me!!! Its OK if they have children'grand children that can help but those without could be in all sorts of trouble?

[#7]

This is something that has hit home for us a bit sooner than for some, as we live in an area with no mobile phone coverage and which gets frequent power cuts, especially in winter.  We've already had several so far this year, none for more than an hour or two so far, but that's enough to take us "off-grid" as far as any form of internet based connectivity.

I've set up a VOIP phone, with a battery backup system, but found that this is essentially useless because the FTTC cabinet dies soon after the power goes off.  I've found that there is a mobile mast some way away from us that has a backup generator (it's also used by the emergency services I believe) so  I'm currently exploring the option of installing a mast above the roof with a high gain dish and LTE modem to perhaps be able to get at least a basic connection, good enough for VOIP.  All told a lot of hassle, not to mention expense, just to replace a very reliable landline phone.  Even if it only allows us to call 105 to find out when the power is likely to come back on it will be useful.

[#8]

Too late (as seems to be the Ofcom way) the issue of power backup seems to have come to the notice of the regulator:

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/12/ofcom-consult-on-uk-telecoms-resilience-and-battery-ba...

[#9]

Lifestyle choice?

[#10]

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@greygit1 wrote:

Lifestyle choice?

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What's a lifestyle choice?  Widespread availability of reliable phones has been something that's existed for a lot longer than I've been walking this planet.  Before we had phones in every home here we had three phone boxes within a short walk.  They went some years ago and now home phones that work for more than about half an hour in a power cut are going as well. 

Doesn't seem to be much choice involved, like the loss of terrestrial TV here about 15 years ago this is just something that's being done without anyone choosing to change anything.  At least when we lost terrestrial TV there was the option to switch to Freesat (which is very good IMHO), but there's nothing being done to offer any reliable alternative for the switch off of the PSTN AFAIK.

[#11]

@markhawkin 

Good to see that Ofcom are looking into it, even if it is a bit late.  IIRC the issue of battery or generator back up for the PSTN was something baked in to the design of exchanges, as it was seen as being critical to the reliability of the phone network.  Given how long ago this was it may well be that this was a decision influenced by the impact of war, perhaps, together with the recognised benefits to society of having a reliable way to summon aid in an emergency.

TBH, if all Ofcom manage is to mandate that the backup power in cabinets lasts for a reasonable period of time, say 12 hours or so, that would probably remove most of the issues, especially in rural areas without mobile coverage.  If they also look at how the degradation in mobile coverage can be halted that would be a bonus.  A side effect of the switch to 5G is that the much higher frequencies used reduce coverage in rural areas.  Around here the only mobile frequencies that sort of work in some locations are the older ones working in band C20.

[#12]

@JSHarris 

"IIRC the issue of battery or generator back up for the PSTN was something baked in to the design of exchanges, "

To be strictly correct, (from my experience of working in various exchanges, albeit 40 years ago), there were batteries and generators.

The idea was twofold:

1.) The batteries would maintain the load of the exchange in the event of the mains supply failing, long enough for the generators to start up and stabilise. That usually took a couple of minutes or so, though in my experience the batteries alone were capable of powering the exchange for significantly longer than that!

2.) The mains power transformers and rectifiers were not designed to be capable of powering the full maximum load that the exchange equipment could possible draw instantaneously. Remember that these exchange power supplies date from the days of electro-mechanical "Strowger" equipment in many cases, which could present a very heavy instantaneous surge loads.  The batteries provided a "float" for these surges.

[#13]

In Strowger times, small rural exchanges had a bank of batteries on float which would last for several hours - enough time for a portable generator to be taken to the site.

With the coming of digital switching, permanent generators were installed, ready to fire up if the mains failed, just like in the larger exchanges.

Now, technology seems to be letting us down, and I doubt we'll ever experience the same resilience again.

[#14]

I had a look inside our FTTC cabinet back in the summer, when there was a chap working on it, adding an expansion box on the side.  The backup looked to me to be a Hawker Energy 12V AGM lead acid battery, slightly larger than a car battery.  The cabinet was a BT/Openreach one, no idea what arrangements other providers have (the only network choice here is Openreach).

When I was researching this before the village hall meeting recently I found mention of providers failing to meet a thing called their "Universal Service Obligation" (USO) during a period of extensive flooding.  Seems the flooding took out lots of cabinets (no surprise there) and it took weeks to get systems working again.  The alleged response from Ofcom was to relax the USO so that providers could have longer periods of downtime without penalty . . .

The main problem that seems to need a robust fix is caused by the cabinets being individually mains-powered.  PSTN cabinets were line-powered with DC from the exchange, which was apparently more reliable.  I can understand this, with the increased prevalence of flooding (drove through the remnants of a flooded road this afternoon) mains powered cabinets may well be more vulnerable than exchanges and overhead lines.

Presumably once everything switches over to fibre a lot of these issues may go away, unless FTTP also needs power (I don't think it does, apart from at the customer end - happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood).

[#15]

@JSHarris 

"The main problem that seems to need a robust fix is caused by the cabinets being individually mains-powered.  PSTN cabinets were line-powered with DC from the exchange, which was apparently more reliable."

The fundamental problem is that originally, telephone cabinets were completely passive, ie no active equipment in them that required powering - not even a light for an engineer to be able to see in the dark! The DC line power that you mention was solely for the individual telephone lines. The cabinets were just cross-connection points between cables - nothing else.

When FTTC came along, power arrangements had to be made for thousands of cabinets across the country. The only practical way to do this was from the local mains supply. To provide the sort of resilience scaled with a telephone exchange would not have been practical nor economic.

It was similar to small local television relays: the big "main" transmitters usually had two 11kV mains feeds, coming from different directions, and sometimes also a generator. Whereas small relays had no backup - the theory was that if the power went off in an area, it didn't matter if the TV transmitter went off in a power cut, because the viewers in the area would also likey have lost power.

This analogy also worked for FTTC - until the PSTN switch-off came along. Does it really matter, when compared with the cost and practicalities, if people's broadband went down in a power cut? Inconvenient, yes - but an essential? Now, when people are left unable to telephone the emergency services - I would say that is an essential service?

Maybe the answer would have been to delay PSTN switch-off until the vast majority of the country had FTTP, and more "fill-in" mobile base stations built in poor signal areas?

The reason given for switching off PSTN was the age and difficulty in maintaining of the exchange equipment. Maybe the government could have subsidised this in some areas? The fact that regions of the country will lose PSTN at different times, (as per television DSO), shows that it doesn't have to be done across the country all at the same time. Maybe switch off in exchange areas that have full FTTP, and use that exchange's equipment as spares for other areas in the interim?