Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
A neighbour tells me that if the telecommunications companies get their way, the current landline system could well be ended? Has anyone on the website heard of any such proposals?
The UK’s telephone network is changing
Copper wires and analogue signals have served our nation for over a century. They’ve kept hospitals, schools and emergency services connected, they’ve powered card machines on our high streets and delivered some of most important phone conversations we’ve ever had with our family and friends.
But, because it's been around for a long time, it’s no longer as efficient as it could be. Replacement parts are hard to come by and, it fails more often than we’d like, meaning it doesn’t provide the world-class service that we need it to. This is why we'll be retiring the analogue phone network at the end of 2025.
By this point everyone in the UK will have been upgraded to a digital phone line, providing us with a greener, faster, and more reliable service. This means landline voice calls will soon be transmitted digitally - in the same way your broadband works. By modernising the telephone network, we’ll be able to do more than ever before, helping the UK to stay competitive on the global stage.
To enable this change, we’ll need everyone in the UK from big organisations, to small local businesses, data hungry families, to elderly relatives using their landline as a lifeline to answer the call and get ready for the Upgrade to Digital Phone Lines.
Landline phones will be axed by 2025: Digital switchover leads to fears elderly and vulnerable will struggle to cope if they're forced to rely on mobile technology
The death knell has been sounded for the traditional landline telephone.
- Millions of customers will be pushed online for first time or must rely on mobile
- Upgrade will impact services that rely on the existing telephone network like alarms, phones in lifts, payment terminals and red telephone boxes
- Concerns over older and vulnerable households which are not online, do not use a mobile phone or live in a rural area with poor connectivity being left behind
- Around 6 per cent of homes– roughly 1.5 million – do not have internet access
From 2025, all households and businesses will need the internet to make calls under a major digital shake-up.
It means millions of customers will be pushed online for the first time or forced to rely on a mobile phone instead.
Those without internet may need an engineer to visit their home to get them set up and those with older phones could need to buy a new handset.
Industry insiders compared the move to the switch to digital TV in 2012, when broadcasters stopped transmitting traditional analogue signals to household rooftop or indoor aerials.
But while that change was led by the Government, the switch to 'digital' calls is being driven by the telecoms industry.
The upgrade will also impact other services that rely on the existing telephone network such as alarm systems, phones in lifts, payment terminals and red telephone boxes. Telecoms giants are aiming for the switchover to be complete in 2025.
But experts have raised concerns that millions of older and vulnerable households which are not online, do not use a mobile phone or live in a rural area with poor connectivity are at risk of being left behind.
round 6 per cent of households – roughly 1.5 million homes – do not have access to the internet, according to watchdog Ofcom.
Many may only use the internet on their mobile phone via wireless services, while around half a million households do not own a mobile.
Caroline Abrahams, director of Age UK, said: 'Given that about half of older people over the age of 75 are not online, this could be a particular problem for our oldest citizens.
'Given the threat of fraud, telecom providers also need to take steps to prevent anyone who is in particularly vulnerable circumstances from becoming victims of digital scams.'
Amid fears a power cut or internet outage could leave households stranded, Ofcom has stressed that telecoms providers have an obligation to ensure all households have access to the emergency services.
This means firms may need to provide customers with a free mobile phone or battery packs.
Around two million customers are believed to have already been switched to an internet-based phone service. BT, which memorably used Maureen Lipman as 'Beattie' to promote landline services in the 1980s, said half a million customers now have its Digital Voice service.
It is not known when providers will write to landline-only customers to inform them of the switchover.
Openreach, which runs the majority of the nation's wire and cable infrastructure, has been working with businesses for months to ensure they are ready.
And the firm is aiming to install ultra-fast full fibre broadband in 25 million households by the end of 2026, which should provide a more reliable service.
Virgin Media, which owns its own cables, is also working to switch its home phone service to its fibre broadband network by 2025.
Martyn James, of dispute service Resolver, criticised the 'failure to publicise' the switchover decision, adding: 'The telecoms businesses risk causing considerable distress to those many customers who find the online world hard to navigate.
'It's vitally important landline customers do not end up paying more and that cheap or subsidised broadband services are available for people forced online.' An Openreach spokesman said: 'Protecting vulnerable customers is an absolute priority for us. We are working with communications providers to identify vulnerable customers early on.'
Ofcom said it is working to ensure vulnerable customers get all the support they need.
Yes.* If everyone has to use the internet to make a phone call, will there be enough bandwith in the system so that everyone can make calls when they want to?
Salisbury is the pilot for the eventual retirement of the Openreach copper network and anyone in the exchange area now upgrading, regrading or switching their broadband or telephone provider will only be able to order FTTP (full fibre) products.
There must be quite a number of households that still have a landline phone system still in place. Do I read you correctly that the Internet will be required for a new proposed system? There are still a considerable number of elderly customers of BT who have neither a mobile or a smart phone or an internet connection.What I think BT is doing is switching off the analogue service in favour of IP, which I assume is the Internet Protocol part of VOIP. So, I assume that households will still have a fixed telephone, but the signal will come via IP and not a copper wire. (However, I am not a techie and may have got it all wrong )
There must be quite a number of households that still have a landline phone system still in place. Do I read you correctly that the Internet will be required for a new proposed system? There are still a considerable number of elderly customers of BT who have neither a mobile or a smart phone or an internet connection.
What about 999 calls needed to be made by such people?
According to Openreach the existing analogue phone network will be retired at the end of 2025
To enable this change, we’ll need everyone in the UK from big organisations, to small local businesses, data hungry families, to elderly relatives using their landline as a lifeline to answer the call and get ready for the Upgrade to Digital Phone Lines
I'm not sure that's the deterrent you think it is(and before anyone says 'Good', just imagine - no railforums)
I'm assuming that the copper wire will need to be replaced with something which takes an IP signal
Yes, the "minimum" implementation would be for copper connections to move over to low-speed internet, which is essentially already there, although many people already have much better than this. I think some businesses were moving over to Voice-over-IP phones about 10 years ago, which I guess is the type of handset needed.Not so, copper is quite capable of carrying data signals - over half of the broadband in the UK is still FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) with the last part of the signal from the cabinet to the premises transmitted over the traditional copper wires
After copper retirement, telephone handsets that don't have their own independent power source wouldn't be able to dial 999 in a power cut as they would no longer be drawing power from copper cables
After copper retirement, telephone handsets that don't have their own independent power source wouldn't be able to dial 999 in a power cut as they would no longer be drawing power from copper cables
Do they not also need power to the router to work? I know that’s the case with my current Virgin set up which uses VoIP.After copper retirement, telephone handsets that don't have their own independent power source wouldn't be able to dial 999 in a power cut as they would no longer be drawing power from copper cables
Provided you have phone signal, emergency calls are possible on mobiles even without a sim card.
Possibly not if you get an Analogue Terminal Adaptor (ATA) which supports pulse diallingMy GPO 746 dial phone will finally be obsolete.
Not that i ever answer the phone.
See my posting # 8 on this thread. I have been in touch with a number of local residents over 70 years of age (most of which are widows living on their own) and quite a number referred to cost implications for this scheme. One or two also are worried about the costs involved with the intention to make people give up their gas central heating boilers, as it was only three years ago when they incurred quite considerable costs in moving from a gas fired back-boiler heating system with a copper cylinder for the hot water to a wall-mounted Worcester Bosch gas boiler. It appears their houses were all built with back-boiler systems.I wonder how this will work for people like my mother in law. The telephone point is in the hall, and there is no other power supply in that part of the house. She won't even get a DECT cordless phone because it would mean drilling holes, for either a phone or mains extension.
Whilst she has a mobile, she is firmly of the 'switch on, make call, switch off' mindset.
There will be other older people like her who equally are unwilling to have extra equipment or 'mess' made of their house, no matter how fleeting. And who is going to pay?
A bit like when we had to buy set top boxes and have our TV aerials changed so that analogue TV could be turned off.
Many of the people to whom you refer (nationally, not specifically) will very likely be those who still get their phone service from BT and are on the default standard tariff with no "free" calls and high per-minute rates and so on. Ditto their Gas and Electric, and so on. Inertia from when these were the only choices. Thus, they are already paying way more than they need.I have been in touch with a number of local residents over 70 years of age (most of which are widows living on their own) and quite a number referred to cost implications for this scheme.
In the old days, I always wondered about those companies when they used to say there were hundreds of channels available, when the normal human being would never check what each and every channel had to offer.Many people in the UK are pushing for a similar full conversion to DVB-T2 so that people can get more channels in HD, but a lot of people don't want this and are happy with the current standard definition Freeview service.
Indeed so, but on the other side of the coin, noting how many young people seem almost surgically attached to their "smart (?)" phones, these elderly people are not constantly using their landline telephone in comparison to "the younger element", so the cost implications are minimal. You are wrong in your assumption about those elderly people not changing to different suppliers from the ones they used to have.Many of the people to whom you refer (nationally, not specifically) will very likely be those who still get their phone service from BT and are on the default standard tariff with no "free" calls and high per-minute rates and so on. Ditto their Gas and Electric, and so on. Inertia from when these were the only choices. Thus, they are already paying way more than they need.
I think there's cause for concern - but not for panic. We've done mass conversion before (North Sea gas, anyone?). Everyone with a telephone line gets it from a supplier. What will be needed is for those suppliers to be required to make sure that their customers can still access a voice telephone service. That could mean providing everyone with a converter at the end of the wire into their house so they can still plug their phone in. It could mean WiFi over a whole block (if everyone gets their telephone from the same supplier). Or it could be providing a free mobile phone on an appropriate tariff.See my posting # 8 on this thread. I have been in touch with a number of local residents over 70 years of age (most of which are widows living on their own) and quite a number referred to cost implications for this scheme. One or two also are worried about the costs involved with the intention to make people give up their gas central heating boilers, as it was only three years ago when they incurred quite considerable costs in moving from a gas fired back-boiler heating system with a copper cylinder for the hot water to a wall-mounted Worcester Bosch gas boiler. It appears their houses were all built with back-boiler systems.
There are some contributors to this website who have the idea fixed in their minds that all retired people have vast accumulated wealth..
In the old days, I always wondered about those companies when they used to say there were hundreds of channels available, when the normal human being would never check what each and every channel had to offer.
Freeview offers me quite an extensive channel range and digital radio in the "Channel 700" section.
Don't the vast majority of TV sets now come with Freeview ready built in. It is years since I saw someone with a set top box.However, there are only 5 high definition channels available on Freeview. (There are some more available temporarily but these will be lost in the next few months when the frequencies are needed for 5G mobile phone coverage). Changing to DVB-T2 could mean conversion of many of the standard definition channels to high definition, and would also mean no more need to duplicate the existing 5 HD channels in standard definition for those with old TVs and set top boxes.