I know there are always exceptions, but...

for 20 years I have been talking about fixed / mobile substitution rather than convergence. About 3 months ago we switched off our home landline and use broadband only. We don't have a fixed line anymore because all we got on it are spam calls or the mother-in-law. Anyone wanting to speak to a member of our household would just phone them directly on the mobile rather than going through the inconvenience of phoning the house, only to find the 'wrong' person answering and then saying the person they wanted to speak to wasn't home.

At our company we have never (!) had any landlines (business is 4 years old). We have a non-geographic number that is forwarded to mobile phones, but no landlines or desk phones. I have not missed them.

I won't be shedding any tears for the loss of landlines, given that even our children's grandmother uses a mobile and social media rather than a landline (mainly, anyway).

There will be edge cases where neither works well, but those are few and far between and that is where the focus should lie for analogue landline providers to provide continuity solutions (e.g. very long copper lines).

Businesses have absolutely no excuse as the switch off should not come as any surprise. Businesses (and services) still relying on analogue services only have themselves to blame if they are caught out.

Let progress roll on!

IOW "Works for me"?

Isle of Wight?

My "landline" is a VoIP thing plugged into the back of the internet box.

I, quite proudly, have that connected to an actual telephone with an actual bell that rings and an actual rotating thing that has numbers around it. The only concession to modernity is that inside there's a little gizmo that translates the clicks into beeps, because the net box only understands beeps.

I have a mobile. I'm using it right now. But it's pretty much only a connected computer, I don't speak to people with it...

I'm wondering how effective battery backup in the home will be if the power in the FTTC footway box isn't backed up. Are these powered from the DC supply at the switch in the same way as POTS?

We seem to have increasing numbers of power cuts recently and mobile signal can't be fully relied on. Longest outage in c 20 or 21 was 17 hours.

In 2015 we had no power for the best part of a week. The emphasis was to get Carlisle up and us out in the sticks just had to wait. Of course we're prepared for that sort of thing because it happens quite regularly, but the leccy board obviously didn't have the capacity to do it any quicker.

The joke at the time that P&O was doing a replacement bus service across the city.

I have used DECT phones on the landline for probably 25 years. They don't support phone calls when the power is out, so not really any change there.

They don't support phone calls when the power is out, so not really any change there.

Should be...

They don't support phone calls when the power is out, so not really any change there unless connected to a UPS

All my network gear is behind one of two UPS's. When the power goes out, I can still surf the net to my hearts content and also receive all those lovely spam calls about my loft insulation, Windows Computer (I'm windows free) and insurance for my washing machine.

...you missed off calls about "the car accident that absolutely was not your fault, sir"

"I have used DECT phones on the landline for probably 25 years."

I've also had DECT on the landline. I also have a POTS phone on it. It works when the power's out on account of a big bank of batteries about 2 miles away at the switch. I call up the electrickery people on it when the power goes off and the mobile signal's playing up.

I live out in the sticks and if there is a power cut affecting the whole area, mobile phones and mobile broadband go down, the last time this happened was during storm Arwin. We were without power for nearly a fortnight.

I have backup power (solar panels feeding a battery bank + a generator and a solid fuel Aga for heating and cooking) so can carry on as normal, however as soon as the mains power went the broadband went down and the mobile phone indicated no service so the masts do not have backup power. The landlines also went down -- no dialtone, not sure why, possibly because the local exchange is now using fibre links to the rest of the system (although still copper to the houses). In days gone by the landline would still work during power cuts.

Now an elderly resident unfortunately had a fall late one night, pressed his pendant, nothing happened because the landline was out, he was found next morning by a neighbour who had gone to check if he was OK. Luckily he was alright but very cold as the house only had electric heating which was also off due to the power cut.

The phones and broadband were off for several days before power was restored to the masts and several more days before power was restored to all the properties in the area (there was a lot of damage and linesmen were working all hours to get things running again).

And the government want us to rely on electricity for everything --- I would need a much bigger generator to keep a heat pump heating system and an electric cooker going during extended power cuts while the Aga only needs a few logs chucked into it now and again.

Agree. Rural Aberdeenshire here, cr@ppy mobile signal anyway, so we use Wifi calling in our mobiles, which 50% of the time is so poor* that we tend to use the landline for important calls (such as hanging on in a queuing system, or speaking to the doctor, where the call dropping would be a real bind). Before landlines are pulled, there should be a standard set for minimum backup and standby capabilities. It's not hard to define what's needed, just that those who think up these wonderful 'advances' are usually based in a city or town and have no concept of what happens out in the sticks.

(*It's sometimes perfect, so our phones are not the problem, which we usually switch to airplane plus wifi-on to prevent hunting between the two. I am convinced it's the mobile operator porting the wifi call out from the broadband stream onto the phone network.)

> until sometime around 2030, when customers will be required to move over to Digital Voice or an alternative.

"Alternative" means BT just going to out wait the oldies until they drop dead and someone else moves in who needs broadband.

Vows it won't 'proactively' shift folks who only use a landline or have no mobile signal.

Too late. I'm old and if I had to wait for the likes of BT or Plusnet I might not be here to use the 'phone.

Luckily we have a local fibre company who seem to be on the ball with this. I switched to them a month ago, so I have now got 3 times the speed for 2/3rds the price. I also have my landline with them. I don't have a mobile, most networks don't work around here and EE, the one that does, can be a PITA to deal with.

What's not to like?

Call me cynical but that was exactly what went through my mind. Say what you like about her, but the cruel mistress that is death is BT's most productive telephony engineer.

will I be able to plug that into the back of the router?

Possibly. Minitel works. Maybe the slow speed fax would as well? Or maybe upgrade to FoIP?

What about my dial-up modem - will I still get a 56K connection?

[ok, I know I only ever got just over 40kpbs, and that was flakey as feck, but I'm a nostalgic kind of girl, and I love those negotiation sounds]

> When a power cut means nan has no phone...

It's a good job that eco-fanatics aren't pushing us into a brave new world of having an unreliable power supply then, isn't it?

Would have thought a fair number of the people that read these articles have their important stuff hanging off the back of a UPS.

God knows rural electricity can be shakey, especially at milking time, so my router is wired though a little 12V UPS. A brownout of only a second is all it took to kill the router, now? Well, woke up one morning and between the UPS and the phone, I didn't realise there was a major power cut until I put the kettle on, walked across the field to feed the cat, and the kettle was still cold when I got back...

The cable companies out here in the desolate wasteland of Her Britannic Majesties northern dominions will sell you a voip line but have to provide 48hr of UPS backup and the local cabinet has to do 48hours without power.

Getting a cell signal means climbing the local 'mountain' (well it's only 700m but the tourist office likes Mountain)

It's a good job that eco-fanatics aren't pushing us into a brave new world of having an unreliable power supply then, isn't it?

sigh ... or indeed that continued burning of fossil fuels isn't driving more and more extreme weather events.

...because I have firewalls, etc. at home and I don't want one of their routers. But there seems to be very little reliable information on what they will install in people's homes and how to interface existing equipment.

The last thing I need is for someone to come in, install stuff and then be faced with extra cost to get different equipment or re-configure my home systems before I can talk on the internet or use my phone again. And who do I call to tell them that my mobile phone reception is rubbish? Hopefully more information will come in time, as I have a relative in Salisbury who is less than impressed with their so called success there.

My understanding is that you have to use a BT router for BT Digital Voice. From the Draytek website (which has other useful information about this)

"The BT Digital Home Phone service does not work with other routers, other provider's devices or ISPs other than BT"

The same is true of the wireless extension sockets that BT will sell you - they will only connect to a BT router.

I don't know if it will be locked down this way for ever or whether eventually BT will open it up, just like they did with their routers. I can live without my landline but don't want to ditch it yet.

It's on my todo list to try to set up my BT router just as a modem with DHCP and firewall being handled by my Draytek and then see if I can plug my phone into the BT router and make the service work. I'm putting it off partly because there's a rat nest of mains, cat 6 and audio cables behind the hifi/IT rack that I've got to do battle with but mainly because I don't think it will work. If BT have tied VOIP to its router working as a router then I suspect I won't be able to configure the setup I've just described.

This is where it gets confusing.

As I understand it, it is Openreach that is shutting down the analogue network. However, consumers aren't actually its customers, so I'm not sure how they're going to identify "anyone with a healthcare pendant" - assuming I can even get through to an actual person at my mother's phone provider, I'm sure their response will be "duh, what?".

A friend's dad has some sort of man-down system that relies on BT. The good news is that they did contact him in advance. The expected news is that it's an ongoing pain in the arse for my friend to get his dad set up with the right system and battery backup. He's playing a lot of phone ping-pong.

"... equipment will be installed in the local telephone exchange allowing them to continue to use their old phone line as before."

What the hell does that mean?

Perhaps they are leaving a copper feed (with power) to Mrs P's house in the street but that negates the requirement for "battery backup units". Otherwise, if there's fibre conversion in the cabinet, why would they need extra hardware in the exchange? I'm a bit confused here.

As I read it they're just installing a version of the Digital Voice whatnot back at what's left of the exchange and then running it over the copper as before. Or, cynically, given that the back-haul for the switch is already digital, they're just leaving everything as it is instead of disconnecting it with the rest.

At least BT seem to have some semblance of an idea what might go wrong, and are not simply disconnecting people.

Oh, that wouldn't happen? Believe me it can and does.

Elderly and confused relative on a phone "plan" from a large (non-BT) company, paid by DD.

Misplaced a letter about switch over to digital services. Not tech-savvy at all, not even a mobile. After some while family members realised "we cannot connect your call" was not a temporary aberration. Cue a search for said letter, then a long drawn out process of getting the service switched over to the POTS look-a-like, suitable hardware fitted, the number reallocated and non-customer configuration issues sorted out. This took several months in all. The standard fee was waived, and I can see why.

The problem is a current attitude in customer relations that says you can simply tell 99% of the customers what they are to do and wait for the unfortunate 1% to pipe up before you deal with them. Ignore that fact that some (many?) of that 1% aren't in a position to pipe up, and many of those don't have someone to look out for them.

This is what lay behind the recent British Gas metering scandal, and probably why BT are being a bit more careful. I will not be at all surprised in the coming year or two to hear of coroners lambasting utility companies after another "this must never happen again" tragedy. Utilities and their regulators are in the spotlight at the moment, hopefully they can up their game from the CPI+3.9% and pocket the money days.

AC for reasons.

When a power cut means nan has no phone

I keep seeing reference to the ill or the elderly as potentially having problems in the event of a power cut, but the impact of a power cut is far more wide-ranging than that.

Where I live (rural, but not exactly the backside of nowhere) we get occasional power cuts especially in winter. A couple of years ago, storms knocked out the power for hundreds (if not thousands) of homes across the county. The lucky folk got power back after a few days, others had to wait a few weeks. During that time there was no home broadband, obviously. And as the local cell towers have no back-up power, there was no mobile broadband or voice comms either, Thankfully the plain old telephone system still functioned (most people had the presence of mind to squirrel away a corded phone for occasions such as this). Voice over copper was the only means of communication we had.

I really shudder to think what the consequences would be of a prolonged power outage once we've moved to an all digital telephone system.

"I really shudder to think what the consequences would be of a prolonged power outage once we've moved to an all digital telephone system."

Well, we'll never know because you won't be able to communicate with us ;-)

If you are reallly that isolated, I recommend a sat phone - they aren't too expensive now.

Assuming of course that WW3 isn't the reason why the rest is offline, in which case you'll have nobody left to phone even if the satellite is still in the sky

This seems a total mess.

Ofcom say that "providers" must provide battery backup for those without a mobile signal. BT seem to be ducking this by delaying the changeover for those who tell them that they have no mobile signal.

At least with BT, it is clear that they are on the hook for backup, eventually.

If you have a different ISP, who is the "provider"? My ISP, Plusnet (part of BT as it happens) says they are not going to provide voice services after the change, so have no obligation to provide a backup unit. The one VOIP company I know says they don't consider themselves as a "provider" in this context either. So hey presto - nobody is responsible for keeping no-mobile users able to make emergency calls when the power goes off. (Who is right? I've asked Ofcom, who have gone away to think about it, and then gone very quiet!)

Three more thoughts:

It isn't just whole-community power cuts to worry about. If your house catches fire, or suffers a flood, your consumer unit may well trip off. And without a backup unit, you are stuck if you live somewhere without an adequate mobile signal.

And beware the promises that you can call 999 using networks other than your own. Yes - you can call 999. But it seems that they can't call you back if you only have signal via a different network - so if 30 mins after your call, an ambulance is drifting around your village trying to find your address, they can't call you to ask for directions.

As to Backup Units, Ofcom confusingly talk about being able to make "an hour of calls" but of course what they mean is that the units will offer the chance to make calls during the first hour of a power outage. If your power goes off at 0100, then some time after 0200 the battery will be exhausted, so even if your 0500 attempt to call 999 is the first call you try, it will be too late. Who chose an hour? When there were concerns about the UK having insufficient generating capacity this last winter, the plan was for a rotation of three-hour power cuts.

It feels very much as if Ofcom has suffered from "regulatory capture" - they seem much better at meeting the needs of the telcos than at protecting the consumers who rely upon them.

Much as I agree about OfCom caring more about pressure from Telcos than customers, it is customer's demand for higher and higher data rates that's driving this. On this forum I've seen recent posts wihngeing that 50Mb/s can't be considered high speed.

On a more positive side there are a couple of things that OfCom could do. It could force roaming in the UK; if there's no Vodafone signal then let me use O2 at no extra cost. The other thing it could do is manage 5G roll-out licensing so that the Telco's have to install it areas with no coverage first. Want those lucrative central-London cells? Not before you've provided good coverage in the Lake District, Scotland and Shenfield railway station.

"so if 30 mins after your call, an ambulance is drifting around your village trying to find your address"

Or some other village if you tried What 3 Words & was misheard.

How much it will be to make a "phone" call to another digital only user across their "phone" network?

I'm concerned about the local exchange battery-powered POTS lines fitted in lifts, for use when the power or mechanism fails...many cellphones don't work in Faraday cages :(

My ISP (the wonderful Andrews and Arnold) have this update about what's happening.

[1] https://www.aa.net.uk/etc/news/sogea-update-1st-september-2023/

I have one of their voice-only lines as I live too close to the exchange, therefore have no cabinet for fibre. It may be ADSL but it's fast enough for HDR Streaming, so no real need for any more. Yet. Unfortunately Vermin Media are in the street, but won't connect me as my drive is too long ... and BT own the conduit to my house. As such OFCOM think that I have fibre available, so isn't forcing BT to offer the service to me. Catch 22. Thankfully I'm moving soon anyway ...

[1] https://www.aa.net.uk/etc/news/sogea-update-1st-september-2023/

It is OK, we have a handset in the sitting room, which uses wifi to the BT router, and a normal land line phone plugged into the phone socket on the router.

Router next to PC, PC next to the fibre in.

All works fine, got a mobile BB fail over as well, but not triggered that yet.

Sounds simple.

But, maybe BT and OFCOM have not noticed that folks no longer have a telephone in the hall, to plug into the router. What about extension sockets around the house, with various phones plugged in? My DECT base station is in the bedroom, simply because that was a convenient place, 20 years ago, to have a phone, phone socket and power socket together. The router is in a cupboard under the stairs, but that is not where I would like the phone to be. The home office (aka spare bedroom) still has a corded phone which I use when I have got fed up with the mobile dropping the call every 4 seconds. How I am supposed to connect that to the router under the stairs?

I can fairly easily solve these problems, and I understand what is going on. But lots of folks will be left disconnected and alone. And it only works with BT's router? I've thrown many of those pieces of junk in the bin, and folks have been well impressed with the improved speed and reliability of service when replaced by something half decent.

A really badly thought out idea and implementation, without even considering the previous examples of loss of power, both short term and widespread.

Must have been thought up by the same committee who came up with smart motorways.

What about extension sockets around the house, with various phones plugged in?

Those extension sockets should be simple extensions running from the main master socket. In the post-digital world the extension would be plugged into the phone socket on the router rather than the master socket on the wall.

And it only works with BT's router?

That's how it sounds right now but I suspect that once there is a critical mass of consumers, the Netgears and BenqQs of this world will be selling similar products. It feels safe to assume that the BT-supplied boxen will be the usual BT quality so there will be a market for people selling something better.

I have had so few problems with VoIP that I can't criticise it. But I do worry what will happen when, not just the network goes down, but the cell towers as well.

That's when we will discover how fucked we are. Has any pilot programme actually tested that scenario? I doubt it.

BT network off and cell towers down? As I mentioned in a comment of my own a bit further up the page, I've experienced that on a number of occasions when a power cut has hit the village (and surrounding area) where I live.

The outcome of the real world experiment? Isolation for days, if not weeks, on end. Unable to communicate, with impact up to and including people having domestic accidents or succumbing to the cold (these things tend to happen more when you don't have the luxury of light and heat) and being unable to contact emergency services.

I heard that other countries, e.g. Norway? have already gone over to all-VOIP or mobile. How do they do this? What have *their* regulators insisted their telcos/ISPs do?