I have done a basic intro on the subject here:
Thoughts, suggestions, contributions, and good links to other resources welcome.
While it is mentioned in the FAQ if you or any relatives have a panic or monitoring service make sure that is sorted out before any changeover. Virgin left my mother without this service* and after 3 engineer visits was still not working. In the end my mother had to rent new equipment from the monitoring service at a higher cost.
*Virgin's end response was as she had a mobile phone this was sufficient backup. My mother wears a panic button which she can activate in case of a fall which sets off first a call to her and if there is no reply a call to named people and/or a call to emergency services. in the case of my mother's previous fall the monitoring service were able to hear my mother when they called and the emergency services were first on scene.
Doesn't this just hammer a few more nails into the coffin of copper or fibre for many? With offers of mobile contracts below £5 per month surely physical connections have just about had it?
Here, the profile on FTTC is 9Mbps and that drops to about 3Mbps and stays there at busy times. That's way less than on Vodafone or O2 - via
4G (12 - 15Mbps). (No likeliness of 5G or FTTP around here for some time.)PA
There's a lot of words there. I would say it needs a simpler summary, which will apply to most people:
Doing funky stuff with SIP is perhaps a separate article[*], since it's not strictly relevant to the AtoD transition - it's just something that you can opt into after the transition once you're achieved point 5 above.
Theo
It all depends on how the mobile network rolls out.
Out here in the sticks I can get mega bps on fibre, but struggle to get mobile
What happens here is a hop from one public wifi to another and seldom use any mobile talk or data at all.
I think that you have a crap ISP if you are only getting 9Mbps and its congested. I used to get 5Mbps on ADSL, and it wasn't congested. Now on FTTP I get what I paid for - not the total 40Mbps, but at least 34 Mbps no matter what.
My mobile is at best 3G. I have mobile data disabled unless I need it. I never make a mobile phone call if I can avoid it.
FTTP costs me less than any mobile plan.
People will naturally migrate to what gives them the best price/performance/service.
There is way more bandwidth on a single fibre than on most mobile connections. Best service would be a public wifi point every third lamppost, fibre connected.
Not using gigahertz radio signals.
OK in built up areas but not for rural areas. We're only about 30 yards away from the last lamppost on our road but it's 10 miles or more to the next one.
I get my landline from BT and my Internet (ADSL+) from PlusNet. Who will provide the new router, preferably one with a socket for my analogue telephone?
3G is usable from all four suppliers here, typically -85dBm. 4G only holds on Vodafone and O2, typically -110dBm in the house.
Well, I wouldn't argue with that. Plusnet. They estimated that their FTTC would be 16-31 Mbps. Despite complaints, it hasn't improved.
The street cabinet is 1km away.
Really? Less than £10 per month? Less than 49p per month?
Will they? All related evidence, such as getting a good return on savings, suggests that they don't
Your response is all about you. For example, there are no street lampposts here - *really* in the STYX.
What would connect your "public wifi" to your premise?
Currently Plusnet are not offering telephone services so you would need to switch to a provider that does....
Dave
That's a question we haven't seen anyone answer yet. In your case BT owns Plusnet so there may be some kind of coordination between the two.
It is possible the phone provider would send out a box with a phone socket that you plug into your ISP's router, but we haven't heard of any of those in the wild yet. I think your situation is not top of the priority list, and they'll leave it on the 'too hard' pile for the moment.
Theo
That prompts the thought that another possibility would be to point people to providers' guides for b/g and basics - including the stuff I added. E.g.
Yes they are:
I think you're confusing this with FTTP, where they don't offer me a phone.
Theo
Running you home network from 4G etc is certainly doable - but it is not a trivial exercise. I expect for many, it would be a significantly inferior service compared to FTTP.
Here I can get perhaps 10Mbps down on 4G with a 4G router upstairs, or with an external aerial. Compare to the 550 Mbps (980 possible) I get on fibre.
I expect that FTTC will also be phased out, with FTTP being the ideal final destination.
One of my lines has ADSL and Phone - both plusnet.
I thought that is what the FAQ was all about, i.e. "what happens to my phone service when POTS ends". At the moment PlusNet only offer a POTS service, so when it ends, no phone.
Dave
There must be a fair number of people with a BT landline, and broadband bought from another provider - it is a common arrangement. A VoIP adaptor with BT phone socket on one side, ethernet on the other, preconfigured to talk to your phone line providers SIP service of choice would seem like the most likely option. Just plug it into our router for service.
That's curious. They will sell me analogue phone service for a 24 month contract today, even though that's supposedly going to be turned off within that time.
I see they haven't announced any digital voice products. But got this email from John Lewis broadband, who are provided by PN (and closing, and pushing people towards new PN products):
"The UK’s telephone network is going digital
The first step in the switch to digital is any provider who uses the Openreach network, including Plusnet, will no longer be able to place orders for new services that run over traditional analogue telephone lines from the
5th September 2023*. To find out more, click here.If you wish to retain your existing landline service you need to move from John Lewis Broadband before the 5th September 2023.
We’ve worked with Plusnet for over ten years to provide John Lewis Broadband services and if you sign up to Plusnet it means you’ll continue to get the same levels of service you would expect.
You can view some of your options here.
So it sounds like they want people to sign up with the Plusnet POTS product before it goes stop-sell on 5th September, but it's very unclear what will happen to them after that.
At that link, when I put in the postcode and phone number, it's offering a
40Mb fibre package, with phone, for £22.99 on a 24 month contract.So it looks like they are going to be in big trouble if suddenly everyone in mid contract loses phone service - lots of contracts are going to be cancelled.
It sounds like either they will be forced to come up with a digital voice service, but they're being lazy arses and haven't done it yet (like they were super slow about FTTP), or they want to get rid of many of their existing customers.
Theo
Will an old(ish) DECT phone work in exactly the same way with VoiP as it currently does with PSTN? In other words, will all its functions still work such as answerphone, remote playing of recorded messages, voice mail if set up, caller ID (which might include incoming number blocking), outgoing number restriction, etc.
In effect, will it make no difference to the DECT phone if it's plugged into the router socket rather than the old wall phone socket? I don't think that these are covered in "bad news" sections.
Well yes, but I think the Fibre providers are falling into two groups. Those like PlusNet and TalkTalk who are selling their product on the basis that you can save money by ditching your landline, and who are not offering a voip service.
Then there the others like Virgin (who are using the BT Fibre in some locations), BT, Sky and ZEN who appear to be offering a VOIP phone service thats locked into their own hardware...
You might rant about the stupidity of the customers of the first group, but I am sure many of them will be saying "thank goodness we are fed up with being "ripped off" by BT because the are paying for a service we don't want because we don't use it."
Dave
Mine does. I have my previous DECT base station and answerphone physically connected into my router FON port for Digital Voice and it works exactly the same way it did before with caller ID etc. - but with a few slight annoyances/changes. I had to configure a couple more rings before the answerphone cut in. On the caller hanging up I now get a engaged like beeping tone which my answerphone initially regards as someone still speaking. It will hang up after 15/30 seconds of this tone but on the previous service with a caller hanging up there was silence and so my answerphone hung up within around 5 seconds, especially if the caller hung up before the outgoing message had finished.
My Fritz router has also got a inbuilt answerphone and DECT interface which I haven't switched on yet. I could pair my existing DECT handsets to the router. Although all DECT phone handsets are meant to be compatible it doesn't necessarily mean that all the functions from a particular phone manufacturer will work. The compatibility may only be the ability to make and receive calls but not, say, to transmit the address book and contact phone numbers from a base station from one manufacturer to the handsets made by another manufacturer.
With an App I can also receive and make calls via the router and digital voice using my mobile phone.
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