Speaking as the confused OP I don't think that Openreach have handled this very well. They make announcements without providing much back up and which leave many questions unanswered. I was very confused.

I have one question left.

When they make telephone calls digital I understand that it will either:
a) remove the need for the existing master socket and presumable its associated connectors or
b) the telephone calls will simply join the existing VDSL feed from my existing master socket to a new modem situated where my modem router is presently located.

At the moment my VDSL equipped master socket is where the cable enters the house and is connected to my modem router by a very carefully routed, but long and not easily accessible, cable. To get at it involves crawling around in 2 very tight unboarded loft spaces.

The answers above suggest no internal house changes but if the master socket is to go then there will surely need to be some or I will have 2 unconnected cables. My concern is obviously for the long master socket to modem cable. I do not want to have the modem where the master socket is currently situated and that would anyway involve a new long network cable to the router.

I am planning for this now as at my age things can deteriorate change quickly

As others have said the digital voice service will come from a socket on the back on your ISP supplied router, if you want the telephone in a different place than where the router is you will need to arrange to have an additional cable put in from the router to the desired location as the router socket will become the demarcation point for the digital voice service.

If the master socket where the cable enters the house is a BT/Openreach NTE socket then I believe that will remain the demarcation point for the VDSL service so will not be removed.

It is very unlikely that Openreach will provide the ONT into your loft.

They will provide to the inside of an external wall, which has a power supply nearby.

If you want your router in some remote part of the house, I’d suggest you get an Ethernet cable to feed to that. Then it can go where you wish it to be, and be routed as you see fit.

ian72

This is not quite correct. There is an (ever growing) list of 220 exchanges where OR will no longer provide Copper service by April 2022 and any service change will be provided over FTTP. The copper will be removed from each premises as the FTTP is provided.

This applies to anyone who's signing up to a new contract, whether you're switching, upgrading or re-grading. If you're out of contract and already on a copper product, you may be able to continue your existing copper-based services in special circumstances - speak to your communications provider if you're not sure.

The list is available from https://www.openreach.com/fibre-broadband/retiring-t...

However 'at present' there is no proactive change from copper to fibre.

It's unlikely that those 220 exchanges will have 100% FTTP coverage, though, unfortunately. I've seen business premises skipped in Salisbury because the freeholder of the building wanted unreasonable terms for the wayleave, so Openreach just left them off the rollout.

There's two things being discussed here, Openreach moving areas to FTTP so they can retire the copper access network which includes ADSL, FTTC and G.Fast, and PSTN switch-off which is the 2025 date that has been floated.

PSTN switch-off (Openreach withdrawing WLR and getting out of handling phone calls, hence FVA being retired as well) has been made more confusing than it needs to be, there's been a bit of scaremongering to SMB customers from companies wanting to pick up VoIP sales, and consumers have got the impression that it means they are going to get FTTP in a few years time.

It is not unusual for a domestic subscriber to have more than one telephone line where the 'other' line might be used for an alarm/fax/lift each from a separate master socket. What are the proposals in terms of hardware for these situations?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

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.”

The voice-only WLR lines will need to be connected to an MSAN or DSLAM or maybe just a modem rack at the exchange in order to get a digital connection for Digital Voice.

"There is nothing in your house you need to change for any of the current services."

'For any of the current services' was the bit that I noted.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

It is not unusual for a domestic subscriber to have more than one telephone line where the 'other' line might be used for an alarm/fax/lift each from a separate master socket. What are the proposals in terms of hardware for these situations?

The current BT Redcare portfolio is now cellular, IP (ethernet) or dual path - no PSTN option. Lift phones are moving over to cellular as well.

The writing has sort of been on the wall for a while and normal churn of equipment that takes place over the lifetime of a maintenance contract should solve a lot of this, the long tail of problems will be things like residential monitoring.

In reply to a post by jpm:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

It is not unusual for a domestic subscriber to have more than one telephone line where the 'other' line might be used for an alarm/fax/lift each from a separate master socket. What are the proposals in terms of hardware for these situations?

The current BT Redcare portfolio is now cellular, IP (ethernet) or dual path - no PSTN option. Lift phones are moving over to cellular as well.

The writing has sort of been on the wall for a while and normal churn of equipment that takes place over the lifetime of a maintenance contract should solve a lot of this, the long tail of problems will be things like residential monitoring.

And if you are in a mobile no spot?