Telephone line - that swop away from normal copper lines

I think you re a tad out of date with your scare story of smart phones being a health hazard, maybe fits your narrative of not wanting one though Cariad 🤣

My landline handset is now connected to a digital source. I do not know exactly what that means, but I do know that it now does not work during power cuts ..... hmmm ... doesn't feel much like progress to me!
I use my smartphone instead.

Retired65

We had a letter from BT to say we were going digital and the date it would happen. Our broadband is with Virgin. We tried BT broadband but the signal kept dropping out.

What I don't understand, is our area has gone digital but our landline is still working, the only difference is now we have to imput the dialling code as well as the telephone number.

The mystery deepens.

That wouldnt be a bother if that's what happens - as the friends I regularly phone have to have a dialling code used anyway - as they're respectively in southern Ireland and back in my home city.

Wonder if your landline is plugged into your router anyway? Both my landline phones are separate from my router - just plugged into two different phone sockets.

I've fairly recently swopped my broadband to that superfast - but just to the cabinet (if I'm remembering aright) and not superfast all the way to the house. Maybe you're one of those things and you've done that totally separate to all this malarkey and that's what is making the difference??

Goodness only knows what makes the difference sometimes. I'm still finding it extremely odd that (50 odd calls by engineers later) my broadband prior to that stopped "playing ducks and drakes" when an engineer visited me yet again back along the very first workday after the (blimmin' awkward) next door neighbour moved out - when he'd only been in the previous time a couple of days before she moved out and it was time no. 49 or whatever it was that it was still not fixed and so it was like the very next workday same guy was back again (and it would have been obvious to him her house was now sitting there empty).

I presume the "green box with all the lines in" that your phoneline comes from might have some connection with it as well???? You can tell I'm not techno-minded. All I knew about the "green box" that served my house was it became very clear it was a bodge job set-up and there's supposed to be a certain percentage of spare lines in these "boxes" - it's down there stated in writing in national guidelines and less local engineers confirmed it to me....but the engineers were struggling here because all those spare lines had been used up and they were doing a lot of cobbling together of how-it-shoulda-been and I came to some rather unfavourable conclusions of what was going on all round.

One of the mysteries of life - along with how many people don't apparently know mobile phones/smartphones are health hazards to use (underlined/written in red/how does one get that message over that "No I can't just swop from a phone that is NOT a health hazard - because it's a landline" to one that is a health hazard - because it's a mobile phone or smartphone. I'm not going to let my health get "played ducks and drakes" with to suit society - I'm going to keep using a landline (to suit my health). Society does not have the right to dictate to anyone they will put their health at risk to suit Society - landlines it is then (to protect my health).

petra

CariadAgain
If you got the hang of a smart phone you could FaceTime your friend.

Or use WhatsApp - wouldn’t cost anything!

We had a letter from BT to say we were going digital and the date it would happen. Our broadband is with Virgin. We tried BT broadband but the signal kept dropping out.

What I don't understand, is our area has gone digital but our landline is still working, the only difference is now we have to imput the dialling code as well as the telephone number.

When we have power cuts, which are quite frequent in mid Wales, my mobile phone still works. If the local mast tower is also affected, I can get a weaker signal from the next nearest usually. I can charge my mobile in the car if there is no power bank as a back up. I think you would have far less worries if you got an up to date mobile with a decent battery life.

That is precisely one of the points why many people wish to keep our existing phonelines - as they don't go down and everything else can be off - but the landline phones will still work.

Add this is a remote area here and lots of people literally will have no way whatsoever to make a phonecall no matter what if their old landline phone gets cut off - due to poor mobile reception. Plus some properties are SO remote they can be/sometimes are cut off by bad weather and the like.

I've figured I could have a new router if need be - and my main phone is inches from it. But my second phone is way away in another room and no way of attaching a very lengthy cord to a 2nd phone thingie on the router (assuming there is a 2nd phone thingie in the first place on one).

This remote area has already had an episode right near me - and I'm lucky I wasnt affected by it personally - where the electric was off for a couple of days (during cold weather at that). Cue for community halls opening their doors, neighbours with power offering help, etc. I was lucky that I was just out of reach of an affected area or that would have been everything in my house out of action - apart from my landline phones. So all I had to do was check if any immediate okay neighbours needed the use of my facilities and they didn't and we were sorted.

This isn't as big a deal as you fear. There's a socket on the router that you can plug your existing wired house phones into. The only real difference will be that if there's a power cut, the whole system goes down, not like the old phone that had its own power supply down the line.

If you fear 'new technology' why on Earth did you use Chat GPT? !!!

Nicolenet

This post is hilarious! Not for real surely?!

Believe me, it is 😉

This post is hilarious! Not for real surely?!

Precisely M0nica - this is not for our benefit. They've clearly forgotten/don't give a monkeys about "the customer is always right". I've generally been asking around a bit more - and Chat GPT is telling me they don't have a legal obligation on them to give me my minimum 4 weeks notice I understood we are supposed to have - or indeed any notice at all!!!!!! They wouldnt dare pull that stunt of just switching off our fuel or water with no notice and not caring whether/when they'd work again. So why is our phoneline deemed to be different/they can do what they please and blow us? (Well at least standard plug-in phones can't be amended either......).

I don't understand why they're allowed to play ducks and drakes with us about this service. I never ever had any water service problems back in my home city and I lived there 40 years (the last 26 in my starter house). Never ever once and the one time I called them in (ie because a daft wotname of a neighbour had planted a leylandii tree near my house I would be selling one day and I figured its roots would go down into our Victorian drains and wreak havoc - and so I called them and went off to work for the day and by the time I came back from work I got a blow-by-blow description of they'd had various workmen out that morning/long phonecall/things down drain investigating/job done and dusted). West Wales is very very different indeed re the water company here (who are awful!) and in the 12 years I've been here they've been out time after time for the area...because things were wrong with their pipes and time after time we spend hours worrying about our water - whilst I try to say "Why are you so different to my old water company - with problem after problem and they never had that?". But even this useless/cba water board does tell us "It ain't you - it's us" and a little automated phonecall comes through saying that and I sigh resignedly with "Not again.....why are they so bad? South West Water isnt - so why are they?" and the water is working again a few hours later and I don't have to get involved in doing anything to make it do so. Because they know WE are the customer and we have to be notified and helped. So why is it different for the phone etc companies? It's a service to our home - the same as the other services - and so why the different attitude by the provider?

Same again with electric - there was a particularly bad storm recently. Some of the town had their electric stop working on them - there was community places to gather and wait/charge mobile phones/etc and people on Facebook offering help. Few hours later - back to normal. So again - why are phone companies let off the hook and can even get away with not telling us that we will have a problem and they deliberately caused it? What makes them different?

Why do the other services have to darn well at least try and provide a seamless service - but they don't?

You are perfectly right - it's all about them and blow us the poor customer trying to get a decent service.

Gobsmacked at such "don't give a damn-ery" on their part. Bet they don't pull that stunt on Buckingham Palace for instance and wouldnt be surprised if they're even allowed to keep their copper lines/have them replaced there if need be. If it's good enough for them to have special treatment then.......sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Worried that it does look as if I could just go to pick up my phone to use it and find it's been cut off and me not even told - still less asked when it's convenient to me/told an engineer will come in (of course) and not leave until I'm completely sorted to my satisfaction.

I've contacted the friend who changes people over to this supplier (as she's a sorta rep/contact for Utility Warehouse) and she says she's going to ring them tomorrow and ask them all about how they do things on this (as it does look a bit like maybe Utility Warehouse ignore peoples need to keep using their phone). So I should know a bit more then and let's hope it's positive.

Got awful visions of just being cut off and having to pay MY own money to get in a private engineer to sort me out and wondering who I'm supposed to be forwarding that bill to - answer being "I betcha I'm the one expected to pay it and no reimbursement".

Though my worst visions are the way my existing (pretty recent) phoneline goes underneath my garden including underneath my new paving stones. In which case - my temper would be heard from the nearer main road - as I threw them out of my garden if I caught them in the act (as has happened to some people). Plus side - I've got security cameras and could prove what was what and I'm now on friendly terms with a newish neighbour of the very intelligent/very forceful/Renaissance man type and I know very well he's perfectly capable of yelling matches and I doubt anyone would try sticking around for long against my will in my garden if I'm in and he's at his house nearby doing more renovating work on it. Not with both of us yelling at them to clear out.

Must speed up seeing "a man about a phone" to get my Chattie basic mobile phone up and running - as simple as it basically seems to be = me and technology are not a compatible mix.

If someone needs "sussing out" - then yep...I can do that basically and amused that a cornershop owner to my last house wanted to know which of his assistants was the thief he realised he had there and I was the customer he chose to ask for a verdict on who it was. Cue - I told the owner (as I'd picked up that a new one there was dicey) and that assistant got promptly sacked and the others thanked me for protecting them. But technology = agh!

We were moved over to VOIP in our last house. In our new house we have something similar. Both are/were crap. The line cuts out without warning or reasoning. We had a week when we could not getincoming calls.

We are always told these things inprove the service offered to customers. They don't. They just make life simpler for he existing suppliers.

Maybe we were fortunate. Our service comes from BT., a helpful person arranged installation on the day of our choice. A package arrived the day before containing everything needed including a gizmo to plug our landline base unit into to avoid having to plug it into the new hub. I’d explained to the BT person as our hub is in the guest bedroom (only place our old hub would work!) it wasn’t such a good idea to plug the phone base unit into it. As Mr C has heart issues and does not use a mobile we were also sent a battery pack and charger to support emergency calls.

The OpenReach engineer was super, we all agreed the new hub could be fitted where the old one had been. The cable was tacked neatly to the wall, outside, half way around the bungalow and installed without mess. Once everything was working he tested the landline, showed us how to connect the battery pack, set up our tv, made sure we were happy and went on his way. It all took nearly three hours. My phone, the iPads and the computer connected without problem, Alexa argued a bit and then gave in.

So far so good. The landline (3 handsets) works perfectly as long as I remember to put the area code in for local calls. The internet speed is much faster meaning we have happy teenagers when they want to play games on their phones. It was one at a time before.

If you have notice of installation I’m told that is the time to ask for anything extra you need, such as the gizmo to enable the landline base unit to be other than attached to the hub or a battery backup.

We were probably very lucky with the engineer, I just hope I haven’t jinxed it all by being so positive!

5,000 public phone boxes are protected by Ofcom in the UK in areas with limited coverage and accident black spots, Openreach can’t remove them, at the moment.
My mobile, which I keep on and charged 24x7 will last approx 75 hours without running out of charge.
In those of 65 years old, 78% use a smartphone, increasing every year.

Good post Petra Cariad you have to stop digging your heels in and move on like all the rest of the world

CariadAgain
As we can see you use chat bots for information.
Are you aware that a ChatBot uses ( roughly) ten times more bytes than a Google search?
Multiple that usage trillions of times over the uk 🤷‍♀️
Why do you think we had shared telephone lines back in the dark days? because the system couldn’t cope with the system we had then
It’s not rocket science.

BlueBelle

We have no phone boxes in our town I thought they had all gone or in use as community libraries etc

Nope - we havent either. But I've seen very recent things on "phone protest group" Facebook groups saying "Yay - we've just saved this one. We've just fought to save that one". They basically protest by proving to the phone company that there are as many people (or more) that use that phone according to the guidelines on minimum usage that the phone company has.

I don't recall the minimum user and "you keep it"...think it might be 20 calls or similar per day and they won't stop it.

Hence there's a working one still - unless I'm much mistaken - in Totnes High Street. Average Totnes mindset - more monied than many, more intelligent than many, more "activist" minded than many and Totnes is still a pretty normal town - after all "cutbacks and Lockdown". Hence I'd identified it as "mine" - but I could never afford it - and now that main street being a pretty steep hill is putting me off. Yep...would-be Totnesian here and hence why I keep tabs on it....

Just that little thing - wireless!!!!!!!

My computer is (deliberately) wired-up. I knew years ago about the health hazards of Wi-Fi.

and I was only asking to be taught the very basics on the secondhand "as new" phone I was buying from an ex-friend and I don't think it was just his "autistic/all about him" mindset he had that I wasn't understanding that phone he mis-sold me after hours of explanation.

I don't need or want a smartphone - a very basic mobile phone will do for me (for whilst out and about - eg calling a taxi). I should be okay with that tiny little bit of wifi exposure - for my sake. I don't want a lot of wifi exposure - for the sake of the companies etc.

We have no phone boxes in our town I thought they had all gone or in use as community libraries etc

A computer - which I've had set up for me. There is only the absolute basics on it - finding websites, email, Facebook, YouTube and that is It. That's all I require. That's all I need.

And all that would be on a phone and you could have someone set it up for you and show you the very basics
If you can use a computer you can use a smart phone it’s your fear that’s stopping you

Basically - as I understand it - They could have thought "Okay - the existing phonelines are getting old now and need replacing" and just done it, ie like-for-like (old copper to new copper). But it's a cost thing - and They want to save money - at our expense.

Part of the "Britain is being rundown for maintenance" - as we all notice what else is being cut/run-down/you name it. It's frustrating - when one can see the money is there....lots of it (but still in only a few hands - Jeff Bezos/Tony Bliar (Blair)/etc/etc. Us "ordinary oiks in the street" (as my father would call it) can "get what we're given - and be expected to be thankful for it".

Lots of us with Internet and I've never had any queueing to send an email. Internet was absolutely fine back in home city with Virgin Cable I had there. So glad I knew what it was supposed to be like when I moved here and had no choice but to swop supplier. I had to have BT engineers in about 50 times!!!!!!! complaining my service wasn't "normal" yet - as it played every which game going (which started with me saying "Why do I have the feeling someone else is talking on MY phoneline sometimes when I'm using it....and I'd hazard a guess they are elderly and speaking in Welsh and that would match my next door neighbour". Cue for it was a party line!!!!! (that thing from history books) and hence I had to have a new line at that point - just to make it normal. Mainly they came in again and again and again and again...ec for I think I know the reason 1. they wouldnt listen to me telling them and telling them "That is the main phone socket there (in my study) and that is the secondary one (in my sitting room). I don't know why you are calling them differently - as that is how it actually is". Mr Engineer was in for about call no. 50 at end of one week, still a problem, her next door (who knew everyone!) moved out Saturday, same guy came in again on Monday for visit no. 51 and this time listened to me for once saying "this is how it is" - rather than trying to tell me how it is and it was sorted - only took about 6 years for them to listen to me expecting the normal service I'd always had back in my own city and no social calls on the next door neighbour.....grrrr...

Meanwhile I had loads and loads of Internet problems - just whilst I was trying to research for and then find tradespeople to renovate the house (which I had to totally gut - apart from the windows and interior doors - which were passable).

So there's no excuse for them going "Dark Ages for you matey - unless you do what WE want and blow you". They could swop our copper phonelines to new ones - but they've just chosen not to to suit their finances.

I doubt the switch from landlines BT copper to Internet is of short term benefit to subscribers. In the long-term maybe.

We swapped to full fibre to the premises with Gigaclear and have had no Internet or phone problems (we kept our existing number) but we do also have mobile phone access with a good signal.

Ilovecheese

One thing for sure, this changeover is of no benefit at all to the customer.

This change to optic had to happen. The old copper system couldn’t cope for much longer with the old system.
It’s comes down to usage and volume.
If we stayed in the dark ages ( which some people would love ) we would be queuing up to send an email and that could take hours to send to the recipient.

grandMattie

I believe that BT is going to change every last landline to digital. It’s already been done (without notice or advice) in our area. I only found out when I needed to call the electric board in a power cut. No landline, dead! Fortunately I have a mobile as well.
The fact that landlines are not supported in power cuts is one of the things that enrage those without mobiles or are vulnerable.

Exactly the same thing happened to us. No notice at all, just a dead line. Nobody else in the road was changed then. Now about five months later, neighbour has gone digital. Plenty of notice, a visit from an engineer to sort out the adapter so she can use phone anywhere not necessarily next to hub, and a free extra phone with an extra answer phone! Meanwhile, I still cannot get my adopter thing to work and so have to have our base unit next to hub and keep missing answerphone messages as rarely go in that at room. Coupled with appalling broadband this last week, I think BT is getting a phone call tomorrow.

I am with VM. I lost my "proper" landline a while back, not because of the changeover directly, but because Virgin weren't maintaining their roadside switch boxes (in anticipation) and my landline became unusable.

My actual telephone is wireless, with two handsets. I had the primary in the hallway, the secondary in the main bedroom and a seperate, wired, handset (a radio/telephone/clock) via a splitter from the wall socket, with the line going up the stairs and round into the bedroom.

I have lost the ability to have my phone in the hall. I have lost the ability to have a phone in the small bedroom, unless I ditch my current instrument and fork out for one with three wireless handsets. The phone has to be directly connected to the broadband hub, which is in the livingroom. I used to have it upstairs in the small bedroom but had to have it moved downstairs, because it so often needed rebooting and because that was where my phone would have to be relocated to so they could connect it to the fibre cable for the TV (which they couldn't in the hall).

I had to move my laptop to my dining table as the little computer table with its ergonomic chair is now fully occupied by the hub, the phone and the battery driven "emergency phone" which will supposedly still work if the Internet goes down (it connects to a mobile network via the fibre).

Unfortunately, on two occasions since it was all done, the Internet has failed due to a fibre line fault - which has also cut off the phone and the emergency handset. I had no way of contacting VM to tell them there was a problem and was without any way of communication for several days, until my daughter realised there was a problem and contacted VM herself on my behalf.

On one occasion a recurring period of "low Internet signal" kept cutting off my landline, but the emergency phone did work. If anybody needed to ring me while it was out, they couldn't unless they knew the "mobile" number of the Emergency handset. They never even told me it wasn't the same number as my Landline when they installed it, so I didn't know.

The Emergency handset is supposedly only available to "vulnerable" people, i.e. people like me who don't have a Smart Phone because we are too old/stupid to use one.

I would like to switch from the overpriced VM internet to Toob, but they don't do phone services. I would need to sign up to a secondary provider such as Vonage (according to a Google search) to get a "landline" (VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol) service.