This topic

Digital Voice

BennetG — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:47:13 GMT

I want to find out (roughly) when the switch to Digital Voice will happen in our area (north London). Does anyone know even vaguely when this is scheduled to happen?

I can't find any helpful info about this on the BT site or through their tech support team, who know absolutely nothing.
For context, we believe that we will need to change our monitoring contract with our alarm provider when the switch-over happens (and shell out about £600 to change the equipment), and we think it may also have an impact on our contract with our broadband provider when the time comes. If I am wrong about either of those assumptions I'd be happy to be corrected. But I must admit I'm furious and disgusted with how dire BT's information is, this is an entirely foreseeable question and they don't even bother to give their tech support teams the most basic info.

Re: Digital Voice

jac_95 — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:47:39 GMT

Hi BennetG,

Thanks for the post and welcome to the Community.

This is an automated response as I can see you have a question about BT’s Digital Voice service. Rather than waiting for a response from the Community, you may find an answer to your question by using the search bar on the Community homepage. We also have a thread that contains a wealth of info related to BT’s Digital Voice, click this link to take a look, Digital Voice FAQs.

Got some questions or want to learn more about BT’s Digital Voice rollout? BT are running localised events as part of the regional rollout of Digital Voice - Click here to view the Digital Voice events

To learn more about the nationwide change to this Internet based voice service visit landlinesgo.digital

If you have already looked for the answer to your question and have not found anything that can help, then please ignore this message. One of our Community members will be along shortly to help you further.

Re: Digital Voice -

BennetG — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:50:24 GMT

Is there any way to get an estimate of when this is likely to happen in our area (north London)? Even very rough - early or late next year, the year after, etc.
We believe that this will mean we have to buy new monitoring equipment from our alarm provider, and it might also affect our contract with our internet provider, so we would like a rough estimate of timeframe, and there's absolutely no helpful info on the BT site or from their tech support team, who didn't even know about it when I spoke to them 5 minutes ago.

Re: Digital Voice

Keith_Beddoe — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:50:56 GMT

@BennetG

If your broadband provider is not BT, then you need to ask them, as BT Digital Voice is only for BT customers, other providers have their own implementation of VOIP.

Re: Digital Voice

iniltous — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 18:44:15 GMT

If you have telephony from BT and broadband from another supplier ( both sharing the same Openreach copper pair ) then that’s a vary rare legacy arrangement and DV cannot be supplied over it , so to all intents and purposes your ‘date’ will be Jan 2027 , but that won’t be an ordinary migration to DV , before then you will be faced with a choice , join BT for broadband , join the broadband provider for telephony ( if they provide IP telephony ), drop the telephone element and remain with the broadband provider and make your own arrangements with a third party VoIP provider, or join a completely separate provider for one or both services.

If you have service from two providers that requires SMPF ( shared metallic path facility ) and that cannot provide DV , because DV requires BT broadband , as a SMPF customer you are at the back of the migration queue, so you have plenty of time to chose who will provide your services , before you are required to make a choice .

Re: Digital Voice

BennetG — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:58:29 GMT

The landlinesgo address included in that automated reply is flagged by my anti-virus as 'malvertising'.

Re: Digital Voice

Keith_Beddoe — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 14:09:47 GMT

Seems fine here https://landlinesgo.digital/

@jac_95 Any comment?

Re: Digital Voice

jac_95 — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:27:32 GMT

@Keith_Beddoe it got miss classified a few months back. Majority have now corrected their database showing there are no threats.

The site itself is updated on a regular basis

Re: Digital Voice

David500 — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:57:48 GMT

@jac_95 Norton is still showing it as “Unsafe Site”

Re: Digital Voice

jac_95 — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 18:44:45 GMT

@David500 hopefully showing as safe now?

Re: Digital Voice

David500 — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 19:51:45 GMT

@jac_95 I've updated Norton and it's still showing it as “Unsafe Site”.

Re: Digital Voice

chrisjp — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:17:35 GMT

"If you have telephony from BT and broadband from another supplier ( both sharing the same Openreach copper pair ) then that’s a vary rare legacy arrangement and DV cannot be supplied over it"

That situation surely can't be all that rare. Up to recently everyone who had a landline telephone had it supplied by BT. And plenty of people will have selected an ISP other than BT for their broadband service.
So BT must be taking this into account in their plans for DV, musn't they?

Re: Digital Voice

iniltous — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 08:47:12 GMT

SMPF ( shared metallic path facility ) was pretty much the default way ‘independent’ ISP’s provided broadband ( BT providing dialtone , someone else provided broadband ) many years ago , Sky and Talk Talk together with BT represented something like 75% of the market using Openreach lines , both those major ISP’s invested heavily in LLU ( local loop unbundling ) whereby they provided their own telephony services alongside their broadband services , eliminating BT any involvement in that customers service , they basically gave their broadband customers a choice , join us for telephony or find a new provider for your broadband, the overwhelming number of Sky and TT customers converted from SMPF to LLU , that was something like 10-15 years ago ( so not recently at all ) and for the last decade you cannot buy SMPF from Sky or TT even if you wanted to , even smaller niche providers can use LLU and if they bother at all with telephony, offer it via a VoIP solution, not via ‘BT’ .

There will be some legacy SMPF customers, ones that pay BT for line rental and a separate ISP for broadband only even then it’s incredibly poor value , so even those that were not given an ultimatum to find a new ISP if they insisted on remaining with BT for telephony, woukd realise what poor value SMPF became , BT full price line rental ( because obviously the no broadband discount cannot apply with SMPF , by definition that customer has broadband ) is around £28.40 , or £46.40 with included anytime calls , a similar price to broadband and ‘landline’ , it’s borderline idiotic to pay this and then pay the ISP probably at least £10-£20 on top of that price.

SMPF is with WLR withdrawal effectively dead , with BTDV there is no way to remain on a competitor broadband service and have ‘BT’ telephony, I dare say there are many who ‘think’ of service as a ‘BT line’ and incorrectly assume that BT has some involvement in their service when they don’t .

Every Sky customer, every Talk Talk customer , every Vodafone customer , not one of them that has a telephone service has any connection to BT telephony , they get their telephone service from their ISP and therefore BT DV is irrelevant to them ….they may have a separate rollout to be moved onto their own IP telephone service, but that’s not ‘DV’ , unfortunately some ISP call their IP telephone ‘DV’ adding to the public confusion, Sky to their credit, call their IP telephone service something different