Moving landline phones to digital technology
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2023
- ☎️ Landline phone services are changing.
Telecoms companies are upgrading their networks and rolling out new digital call services - meaning changes for how landlines work.
Read more here about the switch over and what it means for you:
www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telec...
#technology #ofcom #digital
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These things are always sold as improvements, but they rarely are, it's whatever is convenient for the corporations and not the customers.
Yes you are right, the wires in the cables under our road are too brittle apparently .Every time an engineer lifts the local access cover to fix someones elses line, ours could break down again. It's already been out twice this month due to broken wires. The last engineer repaired it , put the cables back down the hole and put the lid on and it snapped a wire, so he had to re repair it. Our supplier Plusnet, will do full fibre apparently but only broadband with no VOIP. Obviously bt the parent company will do VOIP and want people to switch back to them at higher prices. An old chap next door in his 90s has no chance keeping his landline upon switchover.
We've had our VOIP for nearly two months now, and it certainly is NOT an improvement. The phones have gone off twice since. (The phone won't work if the internet is down, never mind a power cut.) One time we had no communication via broadband OR phone for several hours, but our electricity was working fine.
You can quite easily set up your extensions to work (if you have an electrical socket handy for an analogue adaptor, or one to charge up a digital handset) but what the extensions don't do any more is connect to each other!
Yes, you can answer an incoming call on any extension, as well as make an outgoing one. However, you can't transfer the calls between extensions any more. If somebody answers the phone downstairs and the call is for you upstairs, you can't pick up the call on the upstairs extension any more. You just get a dial tone. BT didn't bother to tell us this.
NOT happy. No improvements for us, and a lot of hassle and expense-having to buy digital handsets, as cordless analogue handsets don't work any more. Corded ones do, but not the cordless ones. And no, the caller's voice doesn't come through better...in fact it can be quite glitchy. Just a pain in the backside, basically. A lot of hassle for no gain.
Oh, by the way, we only got ONE day's notice that we were being switched-and that was via email to my husband's account (not mine.) It was a bit of a panic. And if he'd been away and hadn't checked his email that day, we would have wondered why our phones wouldn't work ...but wouldn't have been able to phone anybody to find out what was happening. So be warned. Make sure you're ready before it happens, because you'll get little or no notice.
@@jannertfol The reason for the change is to save money. At worst, perhaps the landline as a service will end sooner than you think. The traditional line is likely to work much better in bad weather, less prone to dropped calls, worse audio, echoing or complete outages.
Germany decided to switch around 2014 but hasn't fully transferred over to voip even now as it isn't deemed good enough. Banking and emergency services still remain on traditional lines as it is deemed more stable, and less prone to outages or technical faults which can happen anytime (see TalkTalk in the UK).
Broadcasting phone conversations online without permission may also become a very common issue with voip in full use for all landlines. Of course recording others with a traditional line is possible, but it's nowhere near as vulnerable from strangers or scammers.
Imagine finding out your private calls have been shared on social media. The government can do nothing as the one that put it there is in another country. Social media was yet another net service people thought they could put their trust in, nonsensically posting all their private content and photos to a private company, before the hackers and scammers moved in to steal their content (or even mirror their accounts entirely, usually found cloned on other sites without their knowledge)
Great thinking, lets switch to a system thats more easily hacked and doesnt work when theres a power cut.
Yes, just look at 1:15 ... I wonder how they are going to get voip to places (for example mountains) where the phone line is already like 10 km and broadband won't reach... What's less likely to break, a two conducter random cable or a fibre cable...
@@j-trains Copper is going to be replaced by fibre over time, so a new line will have to be run to carry VOIP service. Or Openreach may just refuse to offer service. I'm unsure how the UK law works for service on demand and who pays the bill to run new cable.
Downgrade by weak regulator so vulnerable are at risk in power outages. absolutely useless
Free view tv is going next and freely will be internet based only too
But no service including 999 and operator calls in the event of a power failure.
Most people have mobiles these days and a cheap one is only a tenner.
@@SherwoodAgenda If there's a power cut mobiles will fail too, because at best the repeater towers have batteries designed to only cover brief losses of power. Mobiles are also much harder to use than a standard phone - let alone a big button type one - for peopel with disabilities.
This is true. When Storm Eunice struck and the power to the village failed at least two of the mobile networks failed immediately, one kept going for 6 hours until the batteries expired - don't know what happened with the remaining network.
We are going backwards with this so-called futuristic tool.
Think of all the crime in a power cut because phones don't have power and mobile towers go dead
How will the new service make up for occasional internet outages which will result in a loss of phone access and potentially also emergency services
Well since king john of england asked for the law of Muhammad, you can call people in faith with your heart.
@@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo does Muhammad work for the emergency services?
@@MrVidification 'i testify that: no ideal, only الله; and I testify that: Muhammad is his worker and ambassador'
Some "upgrade". Essentially you are putting all your eggs into one basket: the internet. Everyone will be forced to have broadband, whether they want it or not. Even if you just want a phone, it will be an intenrte service. So you will have to have a router. The telephone service won't be independent any more. If your router fails your phone will go with it. If there's a powercut, no phone service - the existing landline systems carry their own power via th elines, and many exchanges had generators - so even in a powercut, peopel could use the telephone. Not so with the "upgrade". It will be a single point of failure. It also means a wired phone has to be plugged into the router and extension sockets will no longer work. You have to use a corless type phone. Those can be a pain in the arse if your house has thick brick walls and the corless wireless spectrum is crowded, which it will be because everyone will have to use it. And it means buggering about setting up the connection between the router and the cordless phone. It's horrible to try to explain all this to someone elsderly who is used to "you plug it in and you dial the number" type phones.
94 year old neighbour with slight dementia has no chance with his land line then.
Medical Emergency calls during a power cut will be impossible.
Totally agree with every word. We've been forced to live with VOIP for the past two months, and we really hate it. It is no improvement, and it's scary to think that we have absolutely no control over something as vital as our connection to the outside world.
How do the costs compare between internet connected phones vs contract cellphones?
The closure of the hard, fixed landline will lead to many deaths, particularly during power cuts, mobile outages and emergencies in rural areas with no signal.
this is stupid internet constalntly goes down and mobile signals are crap. This should not be allowed
It might even work for vulnerable when set up but if connection is lost many elderly won't know how to set up and re-enter passwords or have mobiles or how to hook up new phones.
The irony is that the current service is far more reliable than internet technology, and no doubt less prone to hacking and other people listening in to your calls as a result. The UK internet is one of the worst in Europe. It's slow with plenty of home and mobile internet outages. The current over reliance on the internet may be one of the worst mistakes. A global outage of the internet will happen one day, the question is when rather than if..
I'm 71 and not very technically minded. Whenever anything goes wrong with my internet it's always left up to me to sort it out, hubby hasn't got a clue. I usually manage to fix it but it's more luck than knowing what I'm doing so I never remember what I did to restore it. We quite often get power cuts where I live, sometimes it may only be for a few minutes, but then it means so many things have to be rebooted (if that's the right word, lol). I have a mobile phone but my husband doesn't and I'm not getting very far with trying to get him something very cheap, otherwise it's going to be more money going out again.
Already in many areas, if you request any change to your phone contract you will be told that Openreach will not connect ANY copper connection. Everyone must change to fibre optic by the end of 2025.
It took 8 weeks for BT and Openreach to move a phone from one room in a care home to another room in the same care home recently.
Openreach policy is not to connect copper.
Don't bank on getting fibre to the premises by 2025. Openreach have said that everyone will be switched over to VOIP but have also said that existing infrastructure will be used if necessary until 2029.
So if the street cabinet (DSLAM) suffers a power cut anyone supported by that cabinet will not have a phone service (even if their power is still on).
I have no problems with this as long as two things happen: All service providers provide a way to use an existing telephone, and some king of back up power supply is used. Both of these for free.
_All service providers provide a way to use an existing telephone_
Sure, and you have to plug it into the router, and your extension sockets won;t work
and they should pay the electric bill for all stuff that has to be kept plugged into power sockets. They're just shifting their costs onto consumers
In retirement flats the Care line will not work with the new system apparently. Also in these flats most occupants do not have internet, smartphones etc. I was trying to explain this to them and no one understood or had even been aware this is happening .
@@margharitamccallum8092 The idea is they roll this out to everyone with no issues and then think about how they do it for the old and vulnerable i.e when it has gone past the point of no return. They'll then say its too expensive to maintain a parallel system. Or do a royal mail where a few years down the line now say they want to scrap saturday deliveries which they knew wasn't profitable when they bought it
The landlines are not "going digital". They are being shut down and being replaced by digital connections which go off, not only when there is a power cut, but every time your broadband provider's system goes down. In my last year with virgin Media I had no broadband "landline" for several hours on about 20 occasions. I was careful not to have a heart attack during such outages. The old landlines almost never went down - perhaps once every ten years, at most. I have had two broadband outages in the last week. Many people live in remote areas with no mobile phone signal. People will die. If the Victorians could maintain the landlines, I am sure that we could at least have a go.
I don't know about across the pond, but this has been going on for years in Canada. I haven't had a traditional phone service since 2007. Instead, I get my home phone via VoIP from my cable TV provider. I just plug my phone into the box they provide. Even the phone company has been moving off copper here for many years.
Are you with Spectrum? I'm with them. I was wondering if they had already switched to broadband phone.
@@CrowdPleeza No, I'm with Rogers in Canada. I get my home phone, Internet, TV and cell phone from them.
@@James_Knott
Alright.
What happens if you get a power cut?
If my area is truly a _full fiber_ area, can you please explain how I still experience the same lack of freedom of movement now as when the UK left the EU? 🚽🙃
Also: When will this _All digital_ upgrade affect my mobile phone, and how? There's been absolutely *no* information given about how mobiles will be affected, when and how we'll need to plug them into our routers. 🔌📲🤔
Lack of hard fact ! Are we able just to keep our copper line THAT already with internet or have we to go wireless if you 50m away or more from Fibre optic cable that would stupid cost to put a link to as my copper speed for me is fine on the rural moor. Yes its all eggs in the China , lets cut em off Basket !
Disgraceful! Watch what happens when world war 3 happens, and Everyone depends on 5g and their router for telephones and in not long near future tv too, it will be the first to go and forgot fm radio!