Digital Voice.

[iniltous]

Absolutely no one is having their phone service removed unilaterally, if the BT customer has BT broadband , that broadband can and does increasingly for BT broadband customer’s, deliver the phone service , a simple change of where the phone connects is all that’s required.
for BT phone only customers ( not yet affected by the closure of the traditional telephone exchange equipment ) their telephone service will be maintained by giving them a broadband service ( that they don’t pay for ) and their phone will plug into the equipment supplied by BT that enables them to continue to make and receive telephone calls using ‘broadband’ .
These customers will pay no more for this new IP ( Internet protocol ) type of telephony than they pay for the current telephony system.

[Cuilchick]

Outlaw123, I  feel your frustration ("well said" was meant as response to your previous post...forgive a beginner).  I am right in the midst of a fight with BT who say they will cut off my old phone as I've ordered a high speeb connection.  Conversations with BT prove that they don't NEED to cut off the phone until the day everyone's old phone get killed (and hopefully they will have found a min cost and workable solution by then...note England planned date is end 2025, Scotland planned date is mid 2024).  It's a marketing issue.   BT is perfectly capable of allowing continued use untill kill date...they simply prefer not to and will try everything to avoid allowing you to keep your line.

[jac_95]

To clarify:

1) Since 5th September 2023 a stop sell of new traditional analogue phone services came into force. This means moving providers, changes to your current services or upgrades maybe effected by the stop sell and if you have a traditional analogue phone service today you'll be moved onto a digital phone service as part of the new package.

- info on stop sell: https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/2023/openreach-change-telephone-networ

As part of this whole process, we’re now taking the significant step of ending the sale of new analogue services across the UK. That means from today, when customers sign up for a new contract - or when they switch, upgrade or re-grade their service via their provider - they’ll be moved onto a new digital line rather than an analogue one.

Above is a quote from: https://www.openreach.com/news-and-opinion/2023/openreach-change-telephone-network

www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/the-all-ip-programme/stopsell-updates/

2) Those who have a phone service today and have been approached to proactively upgrade to digital phone service can ask to delay their move to the digital voice service for reasons such as they are vulnerable, have equipment that needs to be upgraded such as alarms or health/telecare equipment ect...

Here's Ofcom's info:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/future-of-landline-calls

Remember if you're worried about making calls in certain circumstances such as emergencies in a powercut then let the provider know and they can discuss solutions for your situation.

[-Richie-]

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@Cuilchickwrote:

I am right in the midst of a fight with BT who say they will cut off my old phone as I've ordered a high speeb connection. 

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If you accepted the order, you accepted the move to Digital Voice along with the faster speeds.
If the order hasn't completed, you can change your mind and remain how you are, FTTP orders include a move to Digital Voice, you have options for now until you're part of the plan to migrate.

[ScarletP]

Someone said they didn't understand all this PSTN stuff...

Well, it’s like your first car.  You loved it but it got to the age where it was dropping to bits and nobody was making spares for it any more.  Didn’t matter how attached to it you were, there came a time when it had to go.

Same here.  Openreach, (not BT as you all think), can’t continue with the PSTN much longer because its dropping to bits and nobody makes spares for it any more.  It’s obsolete.  Unpalatable as it might be, it has to go.

What would you sooner they do?  Start replacing it before it fails seriously or wait until you have a breakdown and they turn round and say they can’t fix it and you’ll be without a phone service for 18 months while they rebuild the system from the ground up?

Show some of that "stiff upper lip Britishness" we like to BS about and get on with it.  If you don't understand it then learn.  Finding out stuff is easier than ever before.  You have the world wide library of the internet at your disposal.  Use it.

And before anyone asks, I'm in my 70s.

[wkirkman]

@outlaw123 

By the way I along with many non techy users dont have a clue what all the PTSN etc mean.

Public Switched Telephone Network. It’s the name for the telephony equipment and network rising up from the old plug-and-cord exchanges, to the Strowger Switch (see here) and then later more automated devices into the 21st Century Network as BT called it. In essence, the equipment that needs so much money, time, effort to now maintain and replace parts of in all exchanges across the country.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has been around now for over 15 years in use here and there, and like fibre optic technology, has now matured enough to be considered a viable replacement.

Really, the ‘landline telephone’ isn’t going away at all. It’s just changing network. Instead of the old switched telephone network, it will now run on a network of routers already in place that also happen to run websites and services... almost everything these days. We call it the Internet, but that is an International Network or Interconnected Network. The fact the phones will now run on it is just an evolution. The telephone itself is not going away.

This is the phone in my bedroom:

This is running through the Digital Voice VoIP system and works perfectly (even have a pulse to tone converter attached so I can dial out).

Openreach already have plans in place on how to deliver these services to phone-line only customers. It’s nothing scary. Just replacing the Switched Network equipment with Internet Protocol Network equipment. Different boxes, same telephone experience.

Only the well covered (on this forum) ‘power outage in emergency’ thing is a bone of some debate, but Battery Backups are available and a lot of scaremongering by the media is the cause of people’s worries on the most part. But I won’t go into that here as that has been well covered and can be searched to death on this forum.

[Keith_Beddoe]

This two page article may help to explain it https://www.draytek.co.uk/information/blog/the-end-of-analogue-phone-lines-pt1

[RIC9380]

Let's be clear about this.  Ofcom/Openreach isn't just doing this to annoy you.  In fact the UK isn’t the first country to make this move.  Estonia and the Netherlands have already switched off their analogue phone networks, and Australia, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and Sweden are just some of the other countries that are also in the process of winding theirs down.  For most customers the upgrade is very straightforward and painless.

Presumably you embraced the switch to digital television some years ago.  Have you experienced constant crashes and outages of that system since it was introduced?

[Cuilchick]

There are hundreds of people in Scotland (and I'm sure in many other areas of UK) in the position of...vulnerable, no mobile coverage, plenty electricity outages, miles from any main road and/or mobile coverage, not able to move to another house.  I'm not saying this should hold everyone back, I'm saying every one should be brought along too.  There are ways to do that, an example would be to ensure mobile coverage.

[jac_95]

@Cuilchick 

There is another project ongoing to extend mobile coverage - see https://www.mobileuk.org/shared-rural-network

Addressing so-called mobile ‘not-spots’, with continued investment in the Shared Rural Network. In the past 12 months, we’ve improved mobile coverage in more than 500 areas across the UK. And we expect to extend coverage in a further 900 locations by 2024.

- https://newsroom.bt.com/getting-digital-voice-right-for-our-customers/