Copper phase out.

[outlaw123]

Hello all.

We currently have fibre to our local junction box. Then from there to our house is copper. The distance is around 200m. Bearing  in mind the copper phase out date is Jan 2026 will BT have to provide a fibre connection to my house by then? Fibrus have been aggresively trying to get locals to sign up but I want to stay with BT.

[chrisjp · Accepted solution]

There is no "copper phase out" date of Jan 2026 or indeed a later one.

What is being phased out by Jan 2027 is the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) which provides the analogue telephone system. So by Jan 2027 all telephones will have to be connected by Digital Voice (DV). However DV can be provided perfectly well over existing copper cable broadband connections -as well as over fibre broadband. 

This confusion has not been helped by BT saying, in their PR material for DV, that "the old copper network is being retired", and journalists picking this up to claim "BT is ripping out all its copper lines". They are not.

Copper lines will only be fully retired when fibre broadband reaches every house - and Openreach (which provides BT's broadband infrastructure) has provided no target date for this.

[WSH]

I was moved to Digital Voice over three years ago, while still on a copper (FTTC) connection.  The only change is that the phone plugs into the back of the Smart Hub instead of the wall socket.  The router itself continues to be plugged into the wall socket.

Digital Voice works just fine over copper and in fact, I have only just been upgraded to Full Fibre a few months ago.