Landline changing to digital

[ConfusedOAP]

I have just been notified that my landline will be changed to digital.  The notification also states that (and I quote) 'If you don't have a mobile phone or live where there's a poor mobile signal, your telephone provider must offer you a solution to make sure you can make emergency calls during a power cut'.  I don't own a mobile phone.  I've contacted Now by email, but as yet haven't received a reply.  Does anyone know what this offer will be please?

[chilli2 · Accepted solution]

who sent this notification?

are you a now broadband customer?

if so what package are you on?

what router do you have?

is it the Now Hub2?

[ConfusedOAP]

@chilli2  Taking into consideration that my 'handle' is ConfusedOAP, it was my social/council housing landlord who sent the notification. I am a Now broadband customer, I believe I'm on super fibre, and I've no idea about your last 2 questions.

[Jayach]

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@ConfusedOAP wrote:
it was my social/council housing landlord who sent the notification. 

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What they are saying is correct, however (as far as I know) none of the ISP's have said exactly how they will deal with vulnerable/non-mobile using customers in case of a power cut.

[ConfusedOAP]

@chilli2 Sorry, I seem to have pressed the wrong button and accepted your email content as a solution.

[Jayach]

Eventually everybody's home phone/landline will be digital. If you are unaware of just what this means the following links may help.

Digital Voice and the landline switch-off: what it means for you - Which?

Telecare stakeholder plan: analogue to digital switchover, August 2023 update - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Now are one of the few providers still using analogue phone connection on their PSTN connections, so if you are on Now you are unlikely to be affected in the short time.

But do answer @chilli2's questions, as they will help to understand just why you are asking now. 

[Jayach]

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@Jayach wrote:
Now are one of the few providers still using analogue phone connection on their PSTN connections, so if you are on Now you are unlikely to be affected in the short time.

Oops, that should have said "on their FTTC connections".

All PSTN connection are analogue. (before anyone else points it out)

[ConfusedOAP]

@chilli2 

@Jayach Thank you for your reply, but I have no idea what PSTN or FTTC connections are.  It's not going over to digital that worries me, but the fact that if there's a power cut (and we get quite a few where I live) I will have no means of communication.

[RoyB]

@ConfusedOAP 

If you are on Super Fibre, then you are on FTTC (fibre to the cabinet), which means that the last few yards to that big green box in the street are copper, and from there, a copper cable dedicated to your telephone line will run to the exchange.

BT would like everyone to be on fibre all the way, after which they can dig up all the copper and sell it to electric car makers 😛

But this will take years.

Meanwhile, though, they are getting ready to switch off the telephone service that runs over copper (the PSTN, the public switched telephone network). Anybody who changes their broadband supplier before this happens may be asked to move to a digital phone; but anybody who stays with the same broadband supplier is currently unaffected, and won’t be affected until the big switch-off.

However, the big switch-off for copper phone lines is just under 22 months away, on 31 December 2025.

This is what your social/council landlord has started preparing you for; praiseworthy, though it sounds if they could have made a slightly better job of it.

Now have got their own copper, and we still don’t know if it is going to stop working on that date, or continue after it. But unless you are thinking of switching away from Now, you won’t be affected until December 2025, by which time we can all hope things will be clearer.

I’m already switched to a digital phone, which talks to my router; the handset will still work in a power cut, but the router won’t. Expect to see a lot of battery backups for routers coming onto the market soon, which should solve this. But I do have a mobile, though how long the masts will last in a power cut is another issue.

Funnily enough though, I have more resilience now than I had before; all my old non-digital phones still relied on the base station having mains power. So I hope your current phone doesn’t need mains power; if it’s one of those that does, you are already vulnerable to a power cut.

[ConfusedOAP]

@RoyB Thank you so much for explaining the 'technical jargon'.  I now understand so much more, and if the worst does happen then a battery backup for my router will do the trick. Luckily my current phone doesn't need mains power, so I'll definitely be hanging on to that.  Many thanks again for putting my mind at rest.