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Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

MSTRE1200 — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 14:45:19 GMT

My parents are late in their 80s and have had copper landline for 50+ years at same address and are concerned about possible changes to digital voice.

They have no technical knowledge and are very unlikely to understand anything related to a possible change to their service in the near future. What support services are in place to help them?

Are there options for me to help them remotely, they live in Kent, England and I live in Papakura, New Zealand?

Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

jac_95 — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 14:47:16 GMT

Hi MSTRE1200,

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.

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Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

imjolly — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 15:31:24 GMT

do your parents have BT broadband or do they just have a phone line? if just a phone line they will be in last group to be moved to digital voice so probably late 2025 - no need for them to worry

Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

-Richie- — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 17:44:02 GMT

@MSTRE1200wrote:
What support services are in place to help them?

It's a very simple process to setup, instead of connecting to the master socket, they connect to the hub instead.
It only gets complex if there's multiple handsets.

Worst case scenerio is they struggle, BT can send an engineer from a company called Qube to to the setup for them 🙂

Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

MSTRE1200 — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 18:05:07 GMT

They don't do tech at all so no internet, just phone line

Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

Bob1001 — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 10:43:17 GMT

@MSTRE1200 As stated it will be a few years but as they don't have the internet it might actually be easier.

I don't think BT have decided which option to take but they will either provide a suitable hub, probably disabled so the internet can't be used or an adapter which will allow existing phones to be used.

Where BT is very bad (I am not sure how good / bad other suppliers are) at identifying vulnerable customers, it is not just age as there are many of us here who are quite old and certainly don't need help.

Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

MSTRE1200 — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 18:04:27 GMT

Thanks to all for the feed back, will see how things develop over coming year.

Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 18:37:32 GMT

If they have decent mobile coverage then maybe consider starting to wean them off the landline while they still have it to fall back on. It's still far from clear what backup provisions may be made for power failure with Digital Voice, so a mobile will likely be an essential backup anyway.

Re: Move to Voice over IP support for elderly

Tim123 — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 18:24:00 GMT

BT seriously need to bring back this lady!
👇

The legendary Beattie, played by Maureen Lipman, would be the perfect character to explain the change to their elderly and vulnerable customers, while making them smile. And Lipman is now the right age to do it! 😄