new phone system

Warning: It can be complete bullshit about providing emergency backup services for vulnerable customers who have existing devices like panic/fall alarms which dial a 24/365 monitoring services who in turn arrange for contacts and emergency services to attend.

Nothing Virgin supplied worked - they provided two different potential solutions.

Virgins final solution : "you have a mobile phone so that will do as a backup"

To solve the problem a new panic/fall hub was installed at an extra ongoing cost from the monitoring service.

Don't believe everything Virgin claims and be aware if you, or your relatives, have a similar system that has a wearable panic button that interfaces to an auto dialler it should be tested before the Virgin technician leaves the property and that existing equipment may not work correctly, especially during a power cut.

I'm still on copper because they say that as long as it is working they will leave it as I am a priority customer and need the phone to work if internet or mains goes down. So basically it could be next week or ten years from now. Brian

Mine simply has Virgin's modem/router plugged into my UPS. The home-server should see the mains power loss and shut-down gracefully, leaving little load on the UPS, so I hope that it will support the phone for some time.

A UPS is your friend

(yup, I know it sucks, but it is not like staying with what you have is an option either!)

How long is the battery backup for the Virgin's various roadside boxes ?

As BT Openreach is going to FTTP, the same will apply there.

isn't progress pathetic ? ..... only about saving money for big companies....so we have to rejig all our phones......

sooner than later

Nope.

Bullshit.

Just plug into the router instead of the phone line.

Even you should be able to manage that, if someone lends you a seeing eye dog and a white cane.

Except that FTTP doesn't use roadside boxes.

City fibre ran the cable down my road last year and my ISP can now offer me FTTP from (I believe) the City Fibre infrastructure.

The first thing City Fibre did was to install a green cabinet at the edge of the pavement :)

OPenReach don't, as far as I know.

But it probably doesn't have to be powered - just a distribution point. OR use the poles for that round here. I should have been more specific!

just have to do that on the day...pain in the arse

FTTP has no roadside boxes that need power

Look at the bright side. Better call quality - especially on long lines. Access to new capabilities like being able to access your line when out of the house, and on your mobile. Lower cost international calling. Fewer losses of service because some scrote has pinched the copper cutting off a whole village for a week at a cost of 100sK to fix for a couple of hundred quids worth of scrap copper.

That might partly reflect that they have been rolling out FTTP intensively in places it was difficult to serve with other technologies. So overhead services would be common in these cases. I can see in more dense population areas some form of cabinet or manhole would be a useful splice point.

Around here the splice boxes and passive splitters are on poles or in manholes, but not green boxes. Unfortunately, although surrounded by areas with FTTP it hasn't quite got here yet. I'm on a G.FAST box but too far away from it to benefit, so probably considered low priority.

John