Having broadband will become a requirement for voice traffic in the same was as having a land line (and line rental) was for a phone in the past.
However you will still be able to order a "phone line" from whatever provider you want. They will supply and install, and you will be able to plug a phone into it. So the end user experience will be much the same.
All that changes is the foundation technology. So they will get a router one way or another... it might not look like a "router" and might just be promoted as the "thing you need to plug the phone into", in much the same way as a NTE5 master socket currently is.
It also has some sort of test it can carry out, to determine the loading is too high.
And mine is separate from the router. It even has a PDF user manual.
During my cutover, I was given a temporary phone number, before the POTS number was "pulled" into the VOIP system. (This is a courtesy from the VOIP operator.) This temporary phone number was available for a period of two weeks. And this two week grace period, gives you time to phone from your POTS phone, to a temporary phone connected to your VOIP port.
Your setup during the two week grace period...
Legacy POTS New VOIP with temp number | | O-o O-o <=== cheap analog phone used to test line quality
Holding the phone receivers on either side of your head, you can "hear" the line latency
You can examine line quality, versus one of the eight flavors of voice encoding. If there is a problem with the hardware, you'll need every bit of that two weeks, to resolve it, and ensure the hardware is proven before pull.
For example, it took me a while to resolve my "phone does not hang up" problem. When I would hang up the cheap analog phone on my end, the stupid VOIP thing did not drop the connection. This can tie up the phone of the person you had just finished talking to. It took me a bit of time, to figure out how to stop that from happening (it's just a setting in the config). The config can be daunting, if you've ever looked at one, and if the manual isn't very good.
On the "pull" day, the test phone number will stop working, and you'll then set the details of the POTS pull, into the box (as necessary). Phone companies normally do database updates at midnight, so that could be when your phone number cuts over. The "precise" behavior is for billing purposes.
Once you're on VOIP of course, you're fuxored :-) Now you no longer have five nines reliability in a phone system. Just about any digital burp or fart could knock out the VOIP, and you'd never know until you needed it. The nearest phone box, could be quite far away (I've tested the separate message recorder connected to mine, from the grocery store payphone).
Some routers provided by an ISP and having VOIP on them, they have a battery pack (optional, or, provided). But this only lasts for four hours or so, and is hardly a panacea. You could drive the VOIP wall adapter from a UPS, if you expected more of it. And depending on the tech, the box driving the digital connection to your house might not have power during a failure anyway. For example, mine at the street corner, is line powered, and has a power meter for taking meter readings on it. So the phone company pays the power company for the power used. They don't try to run the box off -48V from the CO or anything. If there's a pair in the fiber optic cable, it's not intended for powering giant pieces of equipment. It could be something as simple as a VF Order Wire (tech connects his phone to it). Of course, techs today, contact the CO using their cellphone, and order wires would not be a priority today. (Available on equipment, but not used.)
Even if you have a battery on your VOIP, it would only work for the old ADSL, where there is no box on the street corner to lose power. If the CO drives a line direct to your house, as used to happen with the original ADSL, then that battery in the VOIP box makes sense. But with modern architectures, the box driving your house is line powered, and it may not be practical for them to put 48 hours of battery on it. For most users, it just "drops like a rock" and no dial tone. If you're having a heart attack and need to dial out... good luck.
When the cable TV internet went out due to a fire at the electrical substation, it took 12-24 hours before the cable TV provider connected portable generators to their street corner box. Then the phone would come back. There was a Honda generator next to the pedestal, and a guy would drive up in a truck every once in a while and check the petrol on it. The guy really seemed to be enjoying himself. In a classy neighbourhood, such a portable generator would be stolen as soon as the truck drove away.
Your BT and Virgin kit both seem neglected compared to around here.
Similar, I can *just* see the FTTC cabinet if I stick my head out the study window, 79.990 x 19.999 speeds, if I needed/wanted FTTP then virgin have it available here.
Until recently (now they're supposed to be full-speed on FTTP) it was quite often the difficult to reach places with a handful of houses strung out along a country road that *were* getting fibre, ahead of FTTC.
The new 'normal' people in this world, are my son who simply never uses, nor wants a landline phone service. Folk like you and I and the generation above us are becoming an increasingly <cough> diluted presence !
It is a mess, I notice too that Plusnet now are not doing the 'Advance Line Rental' payment, so I'll soon be paying 21 quid a month for a service I'd like to move into the VoIP domain away from them or another ISP. Except of course that most of that 21 quid pays for someone to make sure the lid stays on the junction boxes on the poles etc. Err, hang on !
It will be for 'old people' who still want a "landline" phone.
I can see "landline" phones going the way of Telex pretty quickly, with everyone using messaging apps for everything except phoning the local council, who will hang on like the NHS did to fax.
They install a MODEM with a phone socket on it. You then need a router that has *Ethernet* capability for WAN access genearally known as a 'cable router'
If you have a router with a phone socket on it, as I have, you have two possible ways to connect the phone.
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