BT switchover to Digital Voice.

[kc]

BT have just sent me an e-mail saying they want to convert my phone to Digital Voice and amongst the small print in the e-mail is -

 

" By booking the appointment, you’ll be providing consent to proceed with the switch over to Digital Voice"

 

How can they presume I am giving consent just by booking an appointment!   I will bet I cannot withdraw my consent to Digital Voice if I find that it's not suitable for my circumstances afterwards.    Frankly I don't want my landline phone to be dependant on the electricity supply.  

 

So my question to the forum members is what are your experiences of Digital Voice?   Have you refused to have it?
 

[Kim Taylor]

Ultimately, I don't think that you'll have much choice, as they've been rolling the changeover out for some time now. Was done here about a year ago, and I believe that all of the old analogue lines have been disconnected. 

Tbh we used the landline so little, we have done away with it as part of our changeover to Plusnet (and halved our bill)

Kim 

[J D 8 - Moderator]

Like you I do not fancy having phone electric dependent [Will not be able to report electric has gone off]  more so as we have zero mobile signal. The electric supply people keep pestering for us to have a smart meter but with no signal and poor internet it is just not possible.

This has been going on for years and they keep wasting time/money sending someone out to check even though we have told them many times.  One rang last week again saying they were coming to fit a new smart meter. No your not we said explaining the issues yet again.  He then said "Your meter is very old and needs replacement [ it is 60] Fit a new conventional one then we say. Don.t do them anymore he says and when it quits you will have to have a smart meter.  How's that going to work then we ask. No answer.

   Have not had the Digital Voice thing yet. Despite Welsh Government polices to get fiber to remote rural areas we still just have the copper wire.

[GrumpyGnome]

If you're a 'vulnerable' customer, BT will provide battery backup. Or you can buy battery backup for under £100.

 

Resistance is futile I'm afraid..

.

[Martin_K]

The old system will not be maintained. My house was migrated earlier this year but BT presented it as a free upgrade to full fibre. (Fibre to the premises). My Internet connection is also with BT so that made sense. I now have;

 

External Box, CSP - where the heavy duty fibre is terminated outside the house
Internal Box, ONT - where the light duty fibre comes through the wall

 

I forget what the acronyms stand for.

 

I delayed making my 'appointment' for months until I started getting text messages telling me to connect my 'phone to the SmartHub 2 (which I did not then have) as switch over was coming. I realised delay was no longer an option.

[kc]

Change should only be to something better and having a phone that needs electricity supply to work is clearly worse.   Those of my age can remember the 3 hour off electricity cuts in the 1970's every evening but at least we could make phone calls in an emergency.

 

Frankly our world is being dominated by idiots who cannot see that being dependant on certain things ( in this case electricity supply ) will cause chaos in an emergency.  Look at last weeks Crowdstrike problem.    Maybe they should have spent less on advertising on F1 cars  ( I wondered what Crowdstrike meant on Lewis Hamiltons car )  and more on staff checking updates before isuing them.   Common sense needs to be used especially by those at the top.

 

 

 

[RottenRow]

You can delay the switchover to Digital Voice for a time (it doesn’t mention how long)) but as others have said it will be the only option eventually.

Mine changed over a month ago but as I haven’t made a call on my landline for several years I no longer have a ‘phone plugged in. I use my mobile for all calls now (which are included in my mobile package). BT just sent me a new router in the post, there was no need for an appointment.

I do agree that the new system is less robust in that it is dependant on a mains supply, though the BT routers work off of 12V so something could be rigged up for emergency use I suppose. A 3s Lipo perhaps….. fitted with a suitable plug.

A lot of households nowadays have a cordless ‘phone, which is also reliant on a mains supply. There did used to be a requirement for one ‘phone in a property to be a passive one (no power supply) but presumably that has been rescinded at some point. 

 

Brian.

[J D 8 - Moderator]

    I do keep a basic land line phone for times power is off.

[GrumpyGnome]

Make the most of it 'cos it won't work when you go digital and the power if off 🙂

[Basil]

12 hours ago, GrumpyGnome said:

If you're a 'vulnerable' customer, BT will provide battery backup. Or you can buy battery backup for under £100.

 

Resistance is futile I'm afraid..

.

I have tried that; they say 'Well you have a mobile phone so you are not without a phone'

Bas

[GrumpyGnome]

I think to be classed as vulnerable you probably need either a burglar alarm that works via t'internet, or a personal safety alarm in case you fall over... for example

Edited July 26 by GrumpyGnome

[RottenRow]

Technology has changed… this means that for residential properties at least, the landline of old has given way to the mobile ‘phone. After all, why have two contact numbers when one will do?

 

This of course relies on the premise that there is a usable mobile signal to every location (which there isn’t).

 

The traditional provider (BT) has changed into a provider of a fibre data line into a property, onto which a pseudo land-line (Digital Voice) can be hung for those that still want to retain their old BT number.

 

As a mobile can be connected to broadband via WiFi Calling, I can’t see any benefit to having a Digital Voice ‘landline’ operating over the same broadband connection (and possibly at additional expense). It’s just two different routes into the same piece of fibre cable.

 

Brian.

[Adrian Smith 1]

Yup, I will be faced with this soon. I notice you can order all the setup on the BT website +DV and better handsets. However, I actually want to talk to a human being as I have couple of questions. How do you do that?  Can't see a sales line to call.  I am with Plusnet at the moment and I can't say they were very helpful.

[PatMc]

1 hour ago, Basil said:

I have tried that; they say 'Well you have a mobile phone so you are not without a phone'

Bas

A mobile phone also relies on the mains.

[Bill Wood]

I'm not a BT customer. Virgin media have put fibre connections outside all houses on my street. I'm not a Virgin customer either. We still use the land line and mobiles. No company has said I need to change anything. Virgin have tried to sell me a package but I'm waiting until they start giving them away. My NOW  router works fine for streaming films etc. I'm waiting until I'm forced to go full fibre whenever that may be.  PS my smart meter has worked fine for many years now.

[Wingman]

Interestingly OFCOM have fined BT - 

BT fined £17.5m for 999 call-handling failures
We have fined BT £17.5 million for being ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure of its emergency call-handling service last summer. 

 

Since the phone service began it had been a legal requirement for the the service - GPO then BT - to provide the 999 service to all phones regardless and for that reason the service was powered from huge banks of batteries all over the country at 48 volts - that requirement has obviously been binned in the name of progress.

 

We had about a 2 hour power outage here last year and the mobile phone system fell over so obviously that doesn't have a backup power supply (nobody knows how to maintain lead acid batteries anymore) - nothing was ever said about that.

[PatMc]

10 minutes ago, Wingman said:

Interestingly OFCOM have fined BT - 

BT fined £17.5m for 999 call-handling failures
We have fined BT £17.5 million for being ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic failure of its emergency call-handling service last summer. 

 

Since the phone service began it had been a legal requirement for the the service - GPO then BT - to provide the 999 service to all phones regardless and for that reason the service was powered from huge banks of batteries all over the country at 48 volts - that requirement has obviously been binned in the name of progress.

 

We had about a 2 hour power outage here last year and the mobile phone system fell over so obviously that doesn't have a backup power supply (nobody knows how to maintain lead acid batteries anymore) - nothing was ever said about that.

 I don't think the 999 failure was caused by a power outage. It was caused by a BT server file error then poor documentation & lack of instructions causing delays in staff dealing with the situation. Basicaly staff were unprepared to be able to deal with the fault situation. 

[kc]

Why is it that we are willing to accept a Digital phone won't work when the mains supply fails?   Surely the phone could be fitted with a battery just like the cordless phones  ( 2 AAA size Eneloop in mine ) that recharges automatically from the mains and can provide an hour or so of calls!   If we accept that technology cannot provide a proper service in future in an emergency then we are wimps and will pay the price eventually - due to terrorism, war, strikes, electric cuts due to sudden mass use of elecric car charging etc.     Some months ago in RCME an article showed how a small, cheap solar panel can keep a gel cell charged for use in shed etc.  Cost was about £18 retail for solar panel and 12 v gel cells about £13 for 7 amp.    Why do we not insist BT do something similar for land lines?

 

The phone companies want to eliminate land lines to force us to have mobile phones which are cheaper for them and much mor expensive for consumers.  Landline users are being forced to also pay for a mobile contract just to have a phone in emergency.  

2 hours ago, PatMc said:

A mobile phone also relies on the mains.

Actually they can also be charged in a car, so can be charged via petrol or diese!   Or a solar panel can charge the car battery or phone.

[PatMc]

31 minutes ago, kc said:

 

Actually they can also be charged in a car, so can be charged via petrol or diese!   Or a solar panel can charge the car battery or phone.

Not if you're a non-driver living alone, as many of the most vulnerable people are.

[EvilC57]

1 hour ago, kc said:

Why is it that we are willing to accept a Digital phone won't work when the mains supply fails?

Er, not sure that we are. But this ‘progress’ is imposed upon us by those in charge, who think they know best.

[Basil]

5 hours ago, PatMc said:

A mobile phone also relies on the mains.

Pat, what do you mean, other that for charging a mobile is a stand alone.??????

Bas

[Philip Lewis 3]

19 hours ago, RottenRow said:

I do agree that the new system is less robust in that it is dependant on a mains supply, though the BT routers work off of 12V so something could be rigged up for emergency use I suppose. A 3s Lipo perhaps….. fitted with a suitable plug.

 

Before you try this make sure you check your specific router, the Linksys ones I use in our F3A scoring system run on 9 volts and I use these to provide the 9 volts from an old no longer good enough to use in flight 5 cell LiPo, if anyone is interested an old 5,000 mah LiPo would power said router for 4 or 5 days.  

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

3 hours ago, kc said:

Why is it that we are willing to accept a Digital phone won't work when the mains supply fails?   Surely the phone could be fitted with a battery just like the cordless phones  ( 2 AAA size Eneloop in mine ) that recharges automatically from the mains and can provide an hour or so of calls!   If we accept that technology cannot provide a proper service in future in an emergency then we are wimps and will pay the price eventually - due to terrorism, war, strikes, electric cuts due to sudden mass use of elecric car charging etc.     Some months ago in RCME an article showed how a small, cheap solar panel can keep a gel cell charged for use in shed etc.  Cost was about £18 retail for solar panel and 12 v gel cells about £13 for 7 amp.    Why do we not insist BT do something similar for land lines?

 

The phone companies want to eliminate land lines to force us to have mobile phones which are cheaper for them and much mor expensive for consumers.  Landline users are being forced to also pay for a mobile contract just to have a phone in emergency.  

Actually they can also be charged in a car, so can be charged via petrol or diese!   Or a solar panel can charge the car battery or phone.

 

My mobiles £5 per month, unlimited calls/texts, much cheaper than landline and for the most part has eliminated cold callers.

[RottenRow]

3 hours ago, kc said:

Surely the phone could be fitted with a battery just like the cordless phones

It’s not the ‘phone itself that relies on the electric power supply being available, it’s the broadband router (and converter in the case of fibre). Without power there will be no broadband operation, on which the digital phone relies.

 

Hence the requirement for some kind of backup battery - manual or a proper uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

 

Brian

 

 

[Frank Skilbeck]

Interestingly a broadband router uses around 5-10 watts, so for 24 hour back up you'd need a 240 w/hr battery, say a 12v 20ah battery. A mobile phone would operate on standby for longer than 24 hours and would only need a small powerbank to charge it up. So maybe the back up position is to provide those that need it a back up mobile phone and have the landline divert to that.

 

BTW when we upgraded our broadband a couple of years ago we went to a digital landline, but it's so infrequently used we might as well disconnect it. The only time we had a power cut we called the power company on the mobile to find out when it was coming back. Don't think I've given anyone my home number in the last 10 years.