Phasing out home phones

[#1]

Seems to me that the simplest way around this problem is to just delay turning off the PSTN and speed up the rollout of FTTP.  As I understand it, FTTP should be as reliable, perhaps more reliable, than the copper pair and the PSTN.  It's also self-powered on the network side I believe, so all that's needed at the consumer end is a battery backup unit.   VOIP works OK, and the makers of medical alert devices are already producing units that can use a broadband connection.  Speeding up FTTP rollout would be a real win, too, and if an additional driver is getting rid of the cost of keeping the PSTN going then that should be a healthy incentive for Openreach, at least.

[#2]

The current proviso is...

"Phone providers have signed up to a charter under which people can only be moved from an analogue to a digital line if there is no impact on telecare."

It is a 'pause' for less than 3% of the UK population. For the other 97+% the roll-out continues (IMO).

[#3]

This issue is now making the front page of a national newspaper, not before time!

[#4]

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It is a 'pause' for less than 3% of the UK population. For the other 97+% the roll-out continues (IMO).

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It's no solution in that case, because members of the other 97% will be developing new medical conditions & frailties all the time. JSHarris seem to offer a possible way out at post 76.

[#5]

Try 1p mobile for a cheap pay as you go sim that provides wifi calling. As it says it is 1p a minute for calls and it works a treat.

1p uses the EE mobile network and so you should get good coverage if you you just a mobile signal.

Depending on the weather and how many leaves are on the trees we get on a good day 1 bar if we stand in the garden and so it was an obvious cheap option. Basically you pay £10 up front for 4 months service and unless you talk allot or download lots of data you are unlikely to need to top up.

So far roaming in Europe has been the same price as in 1p a minute.

Even if they double the cost it is still inexpensive.

[#6]

We've almost a year on 1pmobile at £30 a year or £36 if you want unlimited calls and texts. Dropped our landline at £10 month six months ago. In practice we don't approach the 1000 mins per four months and we don't use the 250MB data allowance, why pay for service you don't need? Coverage poor in steel framed buildings unless you're near a window, otherwise excellent all over the country.

[#7]

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@hirot36 wrote:

Try 1p mobile for a cheap pay as you go sim that provides wifi calling. As it says it is 1p a minute for calls and it works a treat.

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About as much use as a chocolate fireguard here.  No mobile signal, no hope of one any time soon and WiFi calling doesn't address the problem, as the internet (and hence WiFi) fails about half an hour into a power cut.  We have a fair few power cuts lasting more than half an hour every winter.  At the moment the landline still works, so I can call 105 and get an idea as to when they may get the power back on, plus I have the reassurance of knowing that I can call for help if needed.  Come 2025 this all goes out the window, with no way for anyone living along our valley to be able to summon aid if needed, for the first time in more than a century.  Such is progress . . .

[#8]

Longliner that doesn't instil you with confidence. At least when I lost the internet last week I could ring them on the landline. I guess that will soon be a thing of the past.

I do have an emergency backup as I have a USB Dongle which gives me a 4g signal, even sat in the car in the drive, which I can hot spot to and do wifi calling. A bit desperate but it works. Its all down to the aerial in the Dongle as I can't get any signal with the mobile.

If I am getting things right very soon fibre will be coming to a cabinet near us and the signal, unless I pay extra, will be relayed to the house by the original copper wires. Maybe fibre will get as far as the telegraph pole. I then get a new modem/router that converts the fibre signals into  the original internet format. So all seems sort of reasonable....unless there is a power outage.

However, unless I get an agreement with a VOIP phone supplier I will lose both my landline phone and my landline telephone number. From reading threads A&A appear to be a cheap (1p mobile ish) VOIP supplier and I would be given 30 days from when my switchover occurs to sort out a contract and number porting. This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

I am considering getting a VOIP phone contract now, leaving the landline in place to receive calls and hoping that I can port the old landline number to replace the newly acquired number and therefore return to my old landline number. Not ideal, a bit Heath Robinson but it might work.

All of this would be simpler if PN would continue a landline service....and they won't tell us when it is going to occur.

Progress indeed.

[#9]

I can confirm that A&A seem good for a VOIP service.  I can also state with confidence, based on my experience, that FTTC will not provide a reliable internet (and hence VOIP phone) connection if there is a power cut.  The cabinets are mains powered and only have a very limited backup battery capability.  Ours stops working about half an hour into a power cut, which isn't reassuring when it's far from unknown for us to be without power for several hours.  It's reasonably straightforward to port an old landline number to VOIP and it's something that A&A seem to handle without major problems, with a few provisos mentioned earlier in this thread.

A mobile phone isn't a robust option really, even with WiFi calling (because of the problem with FTTC cabinets mentioned above).  Many mobile masts have no backup power at all, so if there's a power cut they stop working.  Larger masts that also provide essential services, like radio, TV or backbone point-to-point links, may have backup power, so whether or not a mobile continues to work in a power outage depends very heavily on whether you (and suddenly many thousands of others looking for a usable signal) are able to connect to one of these bigger masts.

In my case there's no mobile signal here from any network, something that's common in this area.  None of the mobile networks come close to providing 100% coverage in England, let alone the whole of the UK, there are lots of "not spots" with no signal.  Several of the villages nearby either have no mobile signal or a signal that's so poor as to be barely usable.  The older O2 and Vodafone networks (and all their resellers) are really the only ones that work at all in this area, newer networks like EE (and all their resellers) are hopeless, probably because they use much higher frequencies and they do not get down into valleys at all well.

My experimental solution to maintaining some sort of phone connection uses a high gain dish antenna (bit like a satellite dish) mounted on a pole on the roof and pointing at the only mobile mast anywhere near us.  Luckily this is a big mast that also carries a TV and radio transmitter, so it has a backup generator.  To find this out I did need to drive over to look at it and dig out all the planning applications relating to it from the council.  It seems none of the operators will say which of their masts has backup power.  I can just about get a very slow internet connection using this dish and a data SIM in its router.  Not really good enough for internet browsing, but it is good enough to make a VOIP call.  Combined with backup power my end I'm hopeful that this (rather expensive!) arrangement will provide a phone connection that's as reliable as the landline.

[#10]

JSHarris thanks for the reply and confirming A&A being good for VOIP.

Doesn't fill me with confidence that all will continue as it used to do. They appear to have fixed something that wasn't broke and don't seem to do things for their paying customers.

Had  BT  as a customer back in the 90s and they egos were bigger than their technical abilities so I guess it was bound to end in tears.

Wait till the driverless cars come into play and someone updates the GPS Satellites. Back in 2006 was sailing up France when they updated GPS Sat and suddenly we were in Wisconsin US. Could get interesting on the motorway when every car turns left.

Bring back the abacus !

[#11]

@hirot36 

From all accounts, PN will not be offering a phone service at any time in the future. They are now the budget internet brand of the BT Group.

Porting numbers to VOIP providers seem to be getting better with time as more experience is gained. Although you have 30 days from the loss of your landline general advice is to do it asap after the loss just in case of problems.

With A&A I believe you can set up an account in advance where you are given a temporary number. This gives you time to ensure your phones work with VOIP and any additional equipment you may have to buy (ATA).

One thing to watch out for with A&A and possibly other providers is their automated system will fail to port your number as it is "ceased" - you need to get A&A Support to phone the number range holder (in this case probably BT) and arrange a manual port.

Brian

[#12]

@hirot36 

The good news is that once we have fibre to the premises (FTTP) everywhere then we should regain similar, perhaps better, reliable phone connectivity, as when the fibre runs all the way there's not normally any need for intermediate mains power, as there is with fibre to the cabinet (FTTC).

This is a few years away yet, at a guess probably a decade, perhaps longer, depending on where you live.  Openreach have no plans to run fibre out to our village before 2030, for example (in fact they seem not to have any plans at all for beyond 2030!).  There's a rush to switch off the public switched telephone network (PSTN) in order to save money.  Understandable, as the number of people making landline calls has dropped dramatically over the past few years so there just isn't enough income to keep it going.

The major problem with this early switch off of the PSTN is that it will leave a lot of people that rely on a landline phone without any reliable means of making calls, even emergency calls.  The switch to using the internet to make calls (i.e. VOIP) is likely to be harder for the ~3.5 million adults over the age of 16 who don't have an internet connection and so never use it.  I thought this was a surprisingly large number when I read about it a couple of weeks ago, but thinking about it a bit more I realised that I knew of quite a lot of people who haven't ever used the internet in their lives (including our nearest neighbours on either side).

I'm supportive of technology changes when those changes enhance essential services, less so when they remove critical functionality, like being able to always call the emergency services.  The one aspect of all this that I've personally found very frustrating is the dearth of information as to what is going to happen and when, and more importantly what I need to do to ensure that I can retain a similarly reliable means of being able to call for aid if needed as is currently provided by my landline phone.  I've had to spend a great deal of time, and a not insignificant amount of money, in addressing the problem I'm going to encounter by the end of 2025 when the PSTN goes.  It would have been useful to have this clearly spelled out, either by the government or by my current landline provider (Plusnet), but there's been a deafening silence regarding the key detail of the changes.

[#13]

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From all accounts, PN will not be offering a phone service at any time in the future. They are now the budget internet brand of the BT Group.

Indeed. I was talking to an elderly couple over the weekend. They've just (October) moved house. They are landline users. They moved their Plusnet broadband and phone service to their new house. I was surprised that Plusnet have supplied a POTS connection at their new house, and even more surprised they were not told that in the next couple of years they will be forced to either change ISP, or faff about with a third party VoIP service.

Poor stuff, very disingenuous of Plusnet not to warn them. They get a bit stressed when I pointed this out to them, so I backed off, and told them not to worry for the time being.    

[#14]

They moved their Plusnet broadband and phone service to their new house. I was surprised that Plusnet have supplied a POTS connection at their new house,

So am I!. Are they just on an ADSL ( as opposed to FTTC ) connection ? that may explain it. Where there is no FTTC or FTTP service available I believe Openreach have an exemption that WLR can be ordered until March 2024 (at the moment!).

See https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/the-all-ip-programme/stopsell-updates/