Landline only for aged relatives

WOTSWOT

Such a wonderful facility as a pure copper telephone landline, powered from 50V battery with a backup diesel generator at the main telephone exchange is being phased out. It is the end of a golden era, lasting nearly a century, where reliability and accessibility for everyone was the top priority. Since 1987 I have had only three occasions where I lost my phone service. So on average only one outage every 13 years.

Land phones, as opposed to mobile phones are being moved over to the internet as part of a wonderful new dawn of digital upgrades. The last time I lost my internet was just over a week ago, where ironically I was being moved over to EE as Plusnet are losing their phone landline facilities. When I reported the fault I was told it was an external fault and engineers would need up to 48 hours to fix it. As it was a Thursday, that could mean waiting until the following Tuesday in order to fix the fault.

I was easily able to report the fault as my phone was unaffected by the internet outage, in the same way it can survive any power failure at my home or at the telephone exchange. This wonderful feeling of security of communications will soon become a distant memory.

brewerdave

@WOTSWOT - Everyone in positions of power (ie politicians!) have chosen to believe the lies of the Telecoms industry of "99%+ coverage" of mobile phone networks.

I wonder why so many are dependent on wifi calling via their router then ?? .

EnPointe

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82028427#Comment_82028427

99% coverage is not a lie

you seem to be dispalying a remarkabley naive appreciation of GHz band propagation

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82036292#Comment_82036292

I have no doubt that the 4 (3?) networks have 100% coverage of my property.

Unfortunately the nature of the construction means that their 'GHz band propagation' to the interior is 0%.

Entirely dependent on wi-fi calling for phone use, hence the concern of some about the lack of robustness in the event of power loss.

MouldyOldDough

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82036292#Comment_82036292

It depends on the term "coverage" - I can connect to THREE data in my home at a very low speed (less than 100Kbps) - if that counts as connected - then yes….I can just about hold a phone conversation but it breaks up constantly - I assume that this is due to living in the shadow of surrounding houses ! EE is slightly better (2Mbps) but it's still slow

MouldyOldDough

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82036624#Comment_82036624

I discovered a few years ago that THREE had no working battery back up at my local transmitter - when we lost power - we lost phones as well

Beachcomber_252

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82023426#Comment_82023426

Does the point about the TalkTalk MSAN also apply to their customers who are being transferred to Utility Warehouse?

My cousin received an email saying he will be transferred to U.W, and that his existing equipment will continue to work as normal.

His landline is still analogue and there is no mention in the email about a transition to digital voice.

FTTP is not available in his area, and will not be for at least another year, according to Openreach.

A further complication is that he's still using his old Shell Energy Broadband router.

When TT took over Shell broadband a few years ago, he was sent a new router by TT, but eventually returned it, as the Shell one was a better model, and still worked perfectly with TT.

I'm wondering what will happen in January 2027, and if Utility Warehouse customers also use TT's analogue phone service at the exchange?

If Utility Warehouse later advise him to switch to digital voice, will the DV sockets on the Shell router work with their service?

iniltous

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82040642#Comment_82040642

I would imagine the transfer to UW is nothing more than a paper transfer and nothing physical will change , they will continue to be connected to the TT MSAN and in the short term at least continue with the phone connected to the socket on the wall and not the router ….eventually that will have to change , but TT are not under the same time constraints, so January 2027 can come and go , it’s BT (and Virgin ) that are switching off PSTN , not LLU providers turning off their MSAN’s , TT could conceivably wait until the exchange building itself is decommissioned (and therefore have no choice to switch off their MSAN ) and that could be in the 2030’s but realistically it will before then …., should TT (or UW) require a telephone customer to switch to IP telephony you would imagine that if the current router is incompatible they will sent out a new one that is compatible, or do what Plusnet are doing and arrange a switch to a different ISP (EE in Plusnet case ) if the customer wants to keep a landline telephone service .

Beachcomber_252

Thanks, that would explain why they are not moving him to digital voice at the same time as the transfer to UW.

Presumably Openreach will still respond to any line faults which occur with the analogue service after January, if reported via the ISP.

iniltous

LLU ‘lines’ are still repaired by Openreach , and will continue to be even after Jan 2027 , copper will remain for some consumers for many years , it won’t be an issue in your case yet , but an interesting conundrum will be if (for example) TT have a LLU customer with a line fault on the copper pair and Openreach FTTP has become available but the user not interested in changing , and TT haven’t proactively tried to migrate their customer onto FTTP , preferring to ‘sweat’ their MSAN customers , as it stands Openreach could refuse to repair the faulty copper pair and insist the ISP moves their customer onto FTTP as obviously repairing the copper when FTTP is available is a waste of OR’s money , but if there isn’t a FTTP alternative, then the copper is repaired same as it is now .