Openreach consults on shift of 16 MEEELLION phone lines to VoIP by 2025

Re: Problems

Been ripping out Redcare from sites for years. The second owner of a property never feels it's worth paying for. There's no reason, in theory at least, that you couldn't get a "redcare adaptor" that goes on the customer end if absolutely necessary.

Lifts and emergency lines? I think we'll all going to have to start accepting IP as emergency-capable lines by the sounds of it. I'm much more concerned about a little old granny out in the sticks with no family trying to call 999 than someone stuck in a lift who almost certainly has a mobile phone on them, alarm buttons, staff on site, etc. BT's (not unreasonable) plans are to sort out the old granny first, so the lift people will have to get onboard or provide a better solution (e.g. lifts tend to go all the way to the top of the building... which would be a lovely spot to put in a cheap GSM-connected box). Someone already has to pay the line rental, so having to pay for the GSM connection shouldn't be that much of a chore (I can run a GSM connection reliably for £5 a month, I'm sure someone negotiating nationwide can get a cheaper deal... but a BT line rental is what? £20 a month now?).

To be honest, for once, BT are operating at least vaguely in the right decade and I can't really fault them for it.

Re: Problems

New lifts have been using GSM mobiles for years... (yes I know, lift shaft + mobile = theoretical trouble... but new lifts have solutions for this, you just add a sim card!)

And old ones can be retrofitted

@ Shadmeister

BT talk as I think it used to be called fell by the wayside presumably because most people do not require two landlines. BT tried at the end to tie their VIOP into their mobile offering such that mobile calls from home went via the broadband connection but clearly there still was not enough interest.

Thus BT have clearly decided to remove the customers audio bandwidth and make that available for resale via their other services such as mobile and BTwifi.

Yes: very soon you will be able to get broadband without any phone service (it's called SOGEA).

No: you won't save any money. The "line rental" you pay is mainly for maintenance of the copper in the ground, not for the voice service.

In fact, every time you pick up the phone and pay ludicrous call setup and per-minute charges, you're helping to subsidise this cost; and every time a cold caller rings you to sell you PPI claims services, BT receive a termination fee for the call.

So in theory at least, you may have to pay *more* for broadband without the phone service, since they lose this extra cream on top.

Vodafone do this already. Bearing in mind they are voted worst for customer service in mobile, take your chances.

Good luck.

I buy xDSL services without voice capability across Europe. They cost more than a line with voice, without exception. That's because the telco is expecting to make some extra revenue from you making or receiving calls. If that's not possible because there's no voice service they up the rental to compensate.

0laf, you *must* be joking! They have to make their slice of the dosh! (of course I agree, I have the same irritation)

@0laf

its line rental, its rental for teh phone line, regardless of what your running over it you still need the line for a voice call or BB. The voice bit costs next to nothing so you won't notice much if any difference in cost, but you still need the line for xdsl.

"I've no use for a voice line in the house but I've got to bloody have one to get broadband."

You may not have noticed that the broadband arrives in your house via the same set of wires as your phone. If the phone service were not provided that maintenance costs that are currently chaged to your phone line will simply be added to your broadband charges.

If they offer VOIP will they be offering to drop the line rental charges?

Probably, but they'll replace it with "fibre rental" which will be more expensive, because "fibre is more expensive to install". You can't win.

"If OFCOM drop the need for BT to maintain the copper OR may finally be able to replace copper with fibre and have a happy ending?"

Does this replacement happen automagically without any cost?

Technically, nobody in range for copper should be out of range for fibre. The physics just don't support that.

It might cost to convert but it should be a one-time conversion for at least the next 50-100 years.

Mains supply? I think we're talking about the box near the customer converting fibre down to something on traditional copper + 47volt. Otherwise you're talking about ripping up every telegraph pole wire in the country and that's not practical.

No, they'll just fibre to the nearest exchange/cabinet, provide IP backend, and cut the "direct" access to the POTS... it will just go through a PSTN->IP convertor. It knocks out things like Redcare and proprietary protocols that run over the copper, but it shouldn't mean that granny has to even change her phone, let alone all the phone wiring in the house. And presumably said box is already getting mains and providing telephony voltages down the wires to power whatever may be at the other end.

You only need 100Kbps for voice and that's for full encapsulation using G.703 with a SIP overhead. With more efficient codecs you can drop that to 10Kbps or lower.

The number of locations with a telephone service installed but no mains power must be vanishingly small.

"These are all serious and genuine concerns, and the answer has been to deploy very expensive teams of support staff to go and visit this segment of customers to help reassure them and handhold them through the transition."

Somehow I don't think BT will be splurging on a crack team of 'pensioner whisperers' to help ease the minds of those who find technology baffling.

"Warning, costs will go up as well as up."

Yeah that sounds more like BT's m.o.

Depending how it's implemented, people can absolutely keep their existing phones and sockets. They don't need to take a broadband service, at least not one with functional Internet access.

I've seen home broadband routers that are capable of being plugged into the home phone wiring and that generate all the tones and voltages required for a home phone to appear to work exactly as it did before. The change to VoIP is transparent.

Re: No thanks

Erm, so does fibre. It comes with a battery backup system at the client end (I happen to know someone who has FTTP).

Re: No thanks

When did you last lose your POTS phone for more than an hour and/or your Broadband for more than an hour? and/or your Mobile Phone for more than an hour?

i.e. All at once, so you wouldn't be able to make an emergency call?

You seem to be crying wolf regarding a scenario that didn't happen with Manchester bombing, didn't happen with Grenfell and didn't happen with the London bridge attacks.

I'm not saying it can't happen but there is a lot of resilience in place, on all network types, nowadays.