PSTN switchoff "could be delayed by up to two years..."

Article in today's Telegraph: Digital landline switchover delayed amid emergency alarms crisis

It can be read for free (today at least) via MSN here:
www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/digital-landline-switchover-delayed-amid-emergency-alarms-crisis/ar-BB1kQa7N

Plans to rip out traditional landlines and replace them with digital alternatives have been delayed after emergency alarm outages sparked a health crisis.

BT has warned the Government it will not meet the target of moving customers from copper landlines to a new digital network by the end of 2025.

Ministers are currently in discussions with the telecoms giant about a new timeline, but sources said the process could be delayed by up to two years for some vulnerable people.

BT and rival Virgin Media have paused their rollout of digital phone lines amid fears the technology update could put elderly people at risk.

[... continues ...]

Hat-tip to Big Dave over on ISPreview for posting about the Telegraph article in the comment underneath today's ISPr news article.

I note the time-stamp of The ISPreview article.

The problem with the PSTN switch-off and emergency alarms for vulnerable people was raised by the Telegraph in December . Your links are basically to a copy of that, updated to report that BT have now said they can't meet the end of 2025 date.

Only took four months to realise.

Edited by pluralist (Mon 01-Apr-24 12:56:27)

No real need to visit MSN at all: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/31/digi...

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

No real need to visit MSN at all: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/31/digi...

The reason to visit it via MSN is because going straight to Telegraph may be blocked if you have accessed too many articles in a timeframe without paying.

In reply to a post by burble:

The reason to visit it via MSN is because going straight to Telegraph may be blocked if you have accessed too many articles in a timeframe without paying.

Ok, in my case I could read the whole article on The Telegraph with no issue. I believe some articles, like this, are intentionally not paywalled.

Why should Openreach customers have to subsidise care alarm providers who have sat on their hands for close to ten years?

In reply to a post by jpm:

Why should Openreach customers have to subsidise care alarm providers who have sat on their hands for close to ten years?

Completely agree.

That this switchover was coming has been knowledge for a decade.

Are the alarm providers customers of Openreach? Or are they customers of the retailer providing the phone service to the end user?

Openreach customers are the ISPs. If you were an ISP that engaged with industry plans for PSTN shutdown, made test CPE hardware available for alarm providers to test with (bear in mind the majority of these devices will work absolutely fine if you plug them into an ATA), invested a lot in staff training and communication to your customers to ensure the changeover was as smooth as possible, only for care alarm providers to not uphold their end of the bargain and then cry to the press about how nothing is ready, I'd be pretty annoyed if a proportion of the cost of the products I bought from Openreach was going into extending the PSTN network beyond the date that everybody had agreed it would be gone by.

Companies who are not ready for the service to be withdrawn in 2025 will not be ready in 2027 either. In that Telegraph article there are care alarms described as life critical when they have a single path to communicate over - if they are critical devices then ones built in 2010 should have had 3G modems in and battery back-up so that they continued to function in the event of a phone line fault. It seems like the people who build them and sell subscriptions are only considering them to be life critical now that they're required to do some work.

I agree. My brain had earlier blanked out the word "customers" in your previous post . My apologies.

I have a relative who has several times had to rely for rescue in her house on the device on a lanyard round her neck. Now, thankfully, she is in a care home. In the days when these devices didn't exist, my mother was a few times found on the floor in her flat by the lady from the flat above who used to check on her twice a day. Nearest relative 80 miles away.

There's no real excuse for this potentially life-saving gear not to be guaranteed to work in the case of power failure.

As an aside, as you will know but some readers may not, BT Business already have a phone service that switches to mobile if the landline goes down. (Maybe also the broadband? It's years now since I came across that when upgrading a club's provision). So the technology is there, but where it is needed then yes, it's up to the alarm provider to arrange something one way or another for their service.

Edit: Maybe 4G, as 3G is to be phased out by 2033?

Edited by pluralist (Mon 01-Apr-24 16:17:45)