In reply to a post by ian72:

Nobody mentioned that. The standard telephone socket will be moved over to a delivery via the broadband line, the broadband line itself may still be copper. BT have as far as I know made no announcement of a date when they plan to have got rid of copper, I am pretty certain it isn't 2025 as they will need full FTTP (or alternative) coverage before they can stop copper.

I believe the OP did in his opening post and the title of this very thread 😎

There’s obviously quite a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what these changes mean and how they will be manifest.

A decent “switchover” campaign might serve to reassure folk of what to expect and when. The general media are only good for sensational headlines.

"At that point it connects to a router exactly as it does now. There is nothing in your house you need to change for any of the current services - the presentation from the router will be exactly the same as it is now."

What happens if one currently has no internet connection and doesn't want one in the future? Things would have to change.

The OP has FTTC. So "there is nothing in your house you need to change" is correct. If someone doesn't have it then BT will deliver some sort of router to them for a basic broadband service - not sure what they are doing to provide that in the trials but was not relevant to the OPs specific question.

EDIT : Although I guess I didn't mention that the BT Digital Voice requires BT Smart Hub 2 hardware so that could be a change depending on the current router. Other ISPs may do it different ways. We don't know how all the other ISPs will deliver digital voice (or if they even will) to end customers for the PSTN switch off.

Edited by ian72 (Fri 28-May-21 16:04:45)

What happens if one currently has no internet connection and doesn't want one in the future? Things would have to change.

I believe a slow speed (64kbits) connection could be provided over whatever network is available (exchange based / cabinet based or FTTP) just for a voice service ( no internet connectivity)

The line would no longer have dial tone (as no more PSTN) but would be connected to a box of some description (probably a small router with voice port).

The users phone would then plug into the box. Similar to a standard broadband connection a local power supply would be needed for the box. An underlying data service would be used to transport the digital voice (voice over IP) back to the comms provider. Numbers etc would remain the same.

In reply to a post by witchunt:

What happens if one currently has no internet connection and doesn't want one in the future? Things would have to change.

I believe a slow speed (64kbits) connection could be provided over whatever network is available (exchange based / cabinet based or FTTP) just for a voice service ( no internet connectivity)

Until you get to the extreme length lines up at 10km or more. There are quite a few of those especially up in the Scottish Highlands.

Early days yet. Trials are still ongoing and they will ‘discover’ loads of edge cases and probably thousands of other orphaned connections that may have interesting twists in the tail (pardon the pun)!

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Early days yet. Trials are still ongoing and they will ‘discover’ loads of edge cases and probably thousands of other orphaned connections that may have interesting twists in the tail (pardon the pun)!

Or potentially, no twists, just plain figure 8.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

What happens if one currently has no internet connection and doesn't want one in the future? Things would have to change.

I believe you get one of these.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

In reply to a post by broadband66:

What happens if one currently has no internet connection and doesn't want one in the future? Things would have to change.

I believe you get one of these.

Still not quite clear (to me at least) how this will work at the exchange…specifically the bit quoted below taken from the SOTAP blurb about the ‘engineering work’ for voice only WLR lines.

“There’ll be no engineering needed if LLU shared metallic path facility (SMPF) is already on the line – because it reuses the current LLU SMPF exchange equipment. We can still install it if there isn’t any LLU SMPF on the line (i.e. voice-only WLR lines) – we’ll just need to do some engineering work first.”

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 29-May-21 08:17:20)