News: 1620392647

The Openreach advice includes this: "The newer digital technologies will allow you to make your calls over the internet"

Pointless commentary - and potentially confusing to existing users.

I'm off to buy shares in micro-UPS manufacturers.

"The legacy copper network has proven particularly expensive to maintain as the cables and telephone poles used are exposed to the elements, and thus susceptible to weather damage."

My telephone connection is entirely underground except for the green footway boxes connecting bits of underground cables together. My neighbours' connections are all strung from posts for the last few 10s of metres. If/when fibre connections replace them are made my guess is that all of them, including mine, will be overhead.

Yet another piece of insecure tat that needs to be patched and replaced when it inevitably fails. Is the provider going to do the remotely?

If not then how the hell is a normal user supposed to sort it out.

I don't know much about how it works in the house but most people have more than one socket and often the ISP router is not in the same place as the master socket. Does this mean that we now have to rewire to get the inbound phone (or more appropriately) IP connecting into the property and to a convenient location?

Will it be possible to replace the router with your own equipment?

For instance Fritz.box include IP telephony capability in many or their products.

Look at all those horrendous "Technicolor" boxes that were given away (or even charged for) by the ISPs. I am sure there are plenty of other examples people can add to the list.

Re PSTN sockets where you need'em. Telephone wiring is a dark art to me - but if Openreach cut off the master socket from the exchange - is it not possible for the FTTP router/ATA to connect back to it's old socket and power the home PSTN network in reverse? Hence phones on any old PSTN socket will connect to the router/ATA and nothing changes for the old 'extensions' phones except connection to the outside world is via router then broadband via an ATA rather than PSTN mster socket?

That sounds plausable to me - power may be an issue, but then that was always an issue with extensions anyway, and totalling up RENs.

Still, don't listen to me, I'm stupid, and anonymous!

It's worth checking any gear, as lots of it actually has a load much lower than '1' these days.

It's exactly what any ATA - embedded in the router or not - does. You just may need to check how many REN it is capable of, especially if you have some old equipment you wish to be able to keep on using.

For example AVM FritzBox! ATA is capable only of 1 REN (though they have a DECT base embedded, and a mini-PBX) - while some external ATAs from Grandstream or Cisco can deliver up to 4-5 REN depending on the model. Most other routers are probably something between - and unluckily that could be a specification hard to find.

"Look at all those horrendous "Technicolor" boxes that were given away..."

I've got a Technicolor TG589 v2 box and it's working very well, esp after I upgraded to a Fibre connection...it has had some firmware updates and has never "hung", unlike some Draytek routers I had in the past. :-(

Or the "router" will contain a DECT phone basestation with the phones wirelessly connected.

DECT works very well. Lets just hope that the DECT version used is truly universal and "CLI" works accross all brands of phone .... on hang on .... my Rose Tinted Glasses have gone opaque.....

So lots of safety and security critical systems will stop working, power outages will bring comms down and you'll need new equipment. Sounds like a great way forward.

Apart from which VoIP is still a hazardous kludge. IP is the worst possible protocol for voice (out of order delivery and variable latency). So they put a super layer over it to correct for these inherent incompatibilities. And let's not start talking about SIP. As generally implemented, it is, and has always been, a Swiss cheese to attackers. I co-authored a warning article about this for SIP Informer in 2001, but nothing much has improved since then.

Without proper QoS, yes. The best ISPs use separate VLANs with different QoS for data and voice traffic. Cheap routers or ATAs/VoIP phones attached to networks without proper QoS can create issued with very heavy traffic.

"And let's not start talking about SIP."

Again, you should not left it open to anyone but the ISP own SIP proxies - after all the router has no reason to run a generic SIP server open to anyone.

Is the router SIP service is behind NAT and uses ALG/STUN to work is usually hard to detect from outside - but allowing it to receive traffic only from the proxy servers it has resolved it's a good idea. If you just forward the SIP port that needs to be better protected to avoid exposing it to everybody.

You can use a UPS - there are even 12V power bricks now - to keep the router alive for a while, but if the other end of the internet connection fails as well the phone line goes down. That's usually better in FTTH where the OLTs can be farer away and in structures that may have emergency power - worse in FTTC (including G.fast) where the fibre endpoint is close to the user equipment and thereby usually hit by the same power outages and without emergency power. Still some smaller G.fast ONUs can be powered by the CPE.

Your post looks to me like a list of the reasons why the whole thing is technically wrong-headed.

When people are harmed because of the loss of emergency calling, will BT accept any responsibility? Not bloody likely.

You know that at the exchange the call becomes VoIP anyway? Since mechanical relays are long gone?

It's just a matter of configuring VoIP correctly - just like you need to configure a POTS line correctly. POTS line do fail as well - especially when they are older.

Anything written in my post is not rocket science - is basic network design and configurations. In some ways IPv6 would also make VoIP easier as NAT goes away (thereby the SIP endpoint will need proper firewalling), and most ISPs will be forced to assign static prefixes instead of dynamic IPs.

One thing is true, anyway - ISP can't no longer treat VoIP systems as a "nice to have" instead of a critical infrastructure and have to design it accordingly for resilience.

Moreover the less people use landlines because they use mobile calls or even chats, the more they may be unaware the phone line is not working. Routers and other systems should have some kind of notification mechanism to alert the user in some simple way.

Which standard is BT going to use? Here VoIP transition is quite simple as routers have built-in ATAs so you can connect your home analog phone line to them and keep on using the same handsets as before. Of course if you like you can go fully VoIP and use pure VoIP products - but that's your choice.

Only very old devices requiring pulse dialing instead of DTMF stopped working - but because my ATA doesn't support pulse. There are some ATAs that even support that.

We'll revert to the old style 'wind up' telephones you see in early Jimmy Stewart films, you know the ones with the separate ear piece, where you use a small handle to generate a current to attract the operator's attention? Just for use in emergencies, of course, otherwise I'll use my mobile, like everyone else.

;o)

Congrats that you can use your mobile for emergency calls.

Some of us live outside mobile coverage. Losing our landline means losing any ability to make emergency calls in a power cut.

My mobile only works at home because I use wireless calling!

However, I have my router, server, network switch and DECT base-station on a UPS so I have some up-time.

I happen to know that my Gigaclear, village level optical router (for want of a better term) green-box is 2/3rds full of backup battery.

I am confident that I can survive broadband and telephony wise for a few hours without mains power. (Last year my teenage daughter was working from home on a laptop and only knew of the (20 minutes) mains outage when half of her classmates suddenly disappeared from the Teams call.)

My parents in their late 80s don’t own a mobile phone. I bought them once, it lay in a draw uncharged for a few years and no longer works. They don’t see the point in them.

This is a serious issue. When there are floods, gales or other interruptions to power you wont even be able to report it. What a STUPID STUPID STUPID idea. What BONE HEADED ARSE WIPE didnt think it thtough?

At the VERY LEAST it should be reasonable to put a long duration battery in the router and allow a single handset to function for emergency calls, maybe for a week or so. Anything less just makes the whole idea of a phone system less relevant. It means I end up needing to rely on a mobile phone for emergency calls. If the mobile companies get the data plan prices right why then would I bother with a fibre or indeed any other permanent connection? After all, last time I checked getting a phone line 'installed' (or in this case just swapped from the previous house owner to me, with no rewiring, no new equipment, no visit) took BT/Openreach a MONTH to sort out, a new mobile contract including new phone takes 10 minutes.

Ditto!

The current phone network is reasonably resiliant when it comes to power outages, compared to the typical power redundacy available for the networks of a typical user.

After all, many wireless handsets come with a warning that the handset can't be used in a power cut & you need to furnish yourself with an old-school wired jobbie to make calls in an emergency.

Even some of the mobile networks have been less than great during power cuts.

I can imagine there being lots of confused folks around as this starts to filter out across the country. Really needs what you should do in a power cut clearly communicated & have clear expectations on providers laid out (which it probably already is in a 2,000 page standard buried in a basement somewhere).

There are good chances even the POTS system goes down - if the central exchange is flooded emergency power is useless - as it will just trigger more damages if not cut. There are also more chances that efforts are directly first to repair the mobile network because that is morfe useful for rescue operations themselves, than fixed lines. Moreover flooded lines may short-circuit and stop working anyway - depending what the water reaches.

Central exchanges themselves need to be powered, and if they have emergency generators they need fuel to keep on running - otherwise after some hours depending on the tank sizes they will shut down as well. Gas-powered ones need that the gas supply is not interrupted, something that again can happen when there's a danger they can create or spread fires.

I have around one of those Nokia very simple phones with a battery that last far longer than any smartphone, as an emergency backup.

Back when BT was part of the Post Office, the people planning where to put exchanges were usually competent enough to not site them in spots where flooding was likely. The exchanges also had batteries big enough to run the exchange (and all the telephones because they were powered from the exchange) for 24 hours or more. Many exchanges also had backup generators that could keep the exchange operational for a week or more.

With telephones depending on mains driven adapters (with a ONE hour backup battery), mobile phone masts also dependent on mains power (backup batteries normally have only a few hours capacity - when they are even present!!) any prolonged mains outage is going to result in a complete loss of communications.

The thing to remember about BT/OpenReach and their lapdog OFCOM is that all they care about is profits - emergency cover, alarms etc are not profitable so any excuse to drop them will be taken.

I agree with your main point, except want to point out that there are plenty of places round the country where there is no mobile phone coverage, even in the prosperous and well-populated South.

It may not be that bad. I have VoIP and use an ATA (Analogue Telephone Adaptor) and it provides RJ11 jack with dial tone, which I connect to my house phone circuits.

"Another potential drawback is that the all-digital system won't work in the case of a power outage, as it draws a current from the mains, rather than the telephone exchange itself. In short: anything that relies on a landline, from phone calls to alarms, will briefly cease to function."

So if you have a local power outage, BT are assuming that customers will call their leccy firm to report the outrage via a mobile, assuming the local mobile phone mast hasn't also been KO'd by the lack of volts?

And god help you if you have a medical condition requiring an ambulance and the router fails or there's a config issue with the VOIP equipment.

As someone else commented, a small backup UPS system for the router/VOIP phone would be worthwhile...perhaps new routers could even have a small battery built in to at least allow maybe a 10 minute phone call to be made?

At least with the analogue system, a standard phone would still work !