Exactly what I did when I switched to B4RN full fibre and Andrews & Arnold VoIP. I have a DECT phone and an old corded handset connected to extension sockets. The DECT phone continued to work fine. I was already aware that the old corded phone would be of very limited use because it needed the extra ring wire which isn't available from the router and used the old pulse dialling instead of tone dialling so I replaced it with a basic cheapo wired handset for £13 which works fine.
My FTTP comes in overhead alongside the POTS wire. Ths whole road is served overhead and eacch pole has a fibre running up it. It's underground between the poles, though. A nearby lane has fibre joining the poles.
It is 'subject to survey'. They will come along and take a decision about where it'll go. It is quite likely they'll take it from the pole your copper is on, but they may also take it from a different pole if that is more convenient for them, or install new pole(s), or they could bury it in some circumstances.
It generally depends on the local area and whether there is an advantage of burying - eg wires crossing roads that are below the current minimum allowed height could get buried if erecting taller poles isn't straightforward. In most cases I'd guess they will probably take the easiest/cheapest option.
Theo
I would have thought so, but for the fact that when my BT SIM goes dead, so does my TMobile one, even when it's been roaming on one of the other providers.
No it won't. Currently the only equipment in the exchange is for voice and for ADSL. FTTC has all the networking equipment in the green cabinet, and FTTP has it in a regional concentrator maybe 30 miles away. Once the lines back to the exchange are gone, BT can stop leasing the exchange and they only have the FTTC cabinets and a handful of regional concentrators.
(I'm guessing for those remaining few connections with only ADSL who can't have FTTC they'll install some cabinets near the exchange for that, like they did for Exchange Only lines)
Digital voice is just data as far as the local network is concerned, and the phone exchange part of it will live in a rack at your ISP's datacentre.
After all that the exchange building is then free to be upcycled into a luxury hovel.
Theo
Unless you are very old, I feel its "when". The magic to deliver FTTC is expensive, with power and batteries in each cabinet. With FTTP the magic is it your house.
They simply replace the copper from the pole with a fibre with a supporting non-optical fibre inside.
The main change is that they will only feed the fibre into the house at ground floor level.
Dave
there were once upon a time 5 physical mobile phone networks
Orange (Owned by a french company) Vodafone O2 (Owned by Spains Telefonica but now in a Joint venture wuth Virginmedia which in turn is owned by Liberty Global) Three (owned by Li Ka Ching T-Mobile. (German company)
Three and Vodafone are now sniffing round each other and talking about a Joint venture
T-Mobile and Orange merged and rebranded as Everything Everywhere and was jointly owned by T-Mobile and Orange.
BT then bought Everything Everywhere from Orange and T-Mobile.
So you say you have T-Mobile US. I expect that piggy backs onto BT's towers as well as your BT sim.
Sometimes, and sometimes I see O2 or Voda on the screen.
Do you mean the copper underground and from the poles to the house? Possibly it cost more to remove it in labour than it's worth in scrap. When some scrote gets a JCB and steals a long length by pulling it out of the ground the media will report that thieves stole £100k worth of wire. Most of that £100k is the labour to re-instal the cable and to connect it bake up.
Around my way they are running the fibre in the same way as the existing copper from the green cabinet, up the pole and then to the house, above ground.
The fibre runs in existing ducts down my street but only between green cabinet to green cabinet.
I've got it on an existing copper to the premises (FTTC) line. I will be swapping to FTTP soon. There are various (personal) reasons for not swapping for a month or two.
I think much of Zen's advertising and offers is now related to them now selling FTTP and that phone lines are going digital very soon.
+1 Mine is one used pair and a spare pair in the drop wire (with support steel wire)
It used to terminate in a junction box (52A?) just inside the front door and then from the junction box to the BT master socket. The cable between the junction box and the master socket possible had 6(?) twisted pairs although only one pair was used. The drop wire, junction box and the wires to the master socket were all installed by BT at the same time in the late 1980s.
Thanks for all the detailed replies. I'm now finally beginning to understand what will be happening and the options available. I have a few comments, and to keep things together for me in one place I'll cut'n'paste here from the individual replies.
From Andy: >> Do I assume that if I went for an independent VOIP provider now, that >> they would provide some sort of dongle between my current copper phone >> line and Zen's Fritz!Box router? >
Now that's added another option! More-or-less everything I'd read before referred to just plugging in the DECT phone into the "Fon" socket on the Fritz!Box (perhaps requiring an adapter supplied originally with the Fritz!Box). Now there's the possibility of using one of the ethernet ports on the router with a VoIP phone. Interestingly, for the "average" person it seems that other than using Amazon, obtaining a VoIP-capable phone isn't that straightforward. Many would go to Argos or Curry's for a phone, but AFAICS neither of them sell VoIP phones.
Something to watch out for.
From Theo: >> Are you *sure* it's "standard" VOIP? The reason I ask is that Zen state >> on their Digital Voice webpage at >>
Firstly, I think that Zen hasn't been clear in what they say. David noted their comment that "all packages include digital voice", which one assumes includes FTTC as well as FTTP (does it include *all* copper ADSL2?). However, on Zen's Digital Voice page it does say "Working seamlessly with your fibre connection...", which appears to suggest that it's only full fibre it works with. It's now clear to me that it works with FTTC as well.
See my reply to Andy.
(snip email stuff)
Most of the 1 - 8 are or no or little interest to me. Even with POTS, if you moved "out of area" you couldn't keep your old phone number. I'm a bit puzzled about 2, though. Why is it tied to the router? I thought that, for example, with Zen if I wanted to use a different router than the Fritz!box supplied, I would just set it up with the info required to connect it to Zen and that would be it. What makes the VoIP connection so special, especially if I could have used a VoIP phone? David commented, with regard to his router:
"If you have the latest 7530AX then it includes VOIP functionality, a socket into which you can plug a normal phone and a DECT basestation capability.
Its not locked down and so it can be used with virtually any VOIP provider. Mine is connected to voipfone.com and seems fine."
Although he added: "With Zen you are locked into their router hardware. However have played with the router its pretty flexible."
Is that a different type of "locked down" from what you are referring to in 2?
Apologies for taking up a lot of time with this. It's just that having read the diyfaq page it seemed that some more detail and clarification was required - at least it did for me!
Jeff,
Sorry, I didn't make this clear. From what others have said, when you take the ZEN phone offering they remotely configure the telephony in the FritzBox! so that you can't see the authentication details, and can't copy them to another device. I think this will be more common as I understand ISPs are being asked to restrict the use of telephone numbers to one address.
If like me, you don't take the ZEN offering, the telephony configuration in the FritzBox! is currently open, and you can connect the FritzBox! to another telephony provider.
The FritzBox! is capable of connecting to multiple VOIP providers but I am not sure if this is disabled when you have ZEN digital voice.
No problems. I found it hard to get info.
Dave
I doubt it, all the VoIP provision will be virtualised in software, and live in (someone's) cloud.
Yes, but if you have lost your adapter it's around £2 on Ebay
BT will definitely be vacating about 4,500 exchange buildings, leaving around 1,000, presumably the digital voice servers (if not in those already, will be moved)
BT are saying they'll remove 200 tonnes of copper this year and a total of 200,000 tonnes by the 2030s, total worth £1.4bn
Not quite 10% of their market cap.
That's interesting. I occasionally export the Fritz!Box settings (as a text file which is currently about 172kB!) in case I have to restore them if an update goes wrong. I assume that Zen's remotely configured file is somehow encrypted for telephony so the details can't be extracted from the exported file info. I wonder if the details are included for a restore or if you have to go back to Zen for them to reconfigure the Fritz!Box telephony.
The term VoIP occurs only twice in the 7530 manual, but in the exported file it appears 23 times! I've no idea what the lines mean, as I have no VoIP provider. The manual tends to use "IP telephony" in its place, but the information supplied is rather limited (and the term does not appear in the exported file).
Did you configure the Fritz!Box with your VoIP provider telephony info, or, as the manual notes, "Some telephony providers configure your telephone numbers automatically", and the configuration was done remotely?
It sure is!
Amazingly enough, I found it next to the box the Fritz!Box router came in! It's now back *in* that box.
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