For those of us old enough to remember Eternal September

… I'd just like to take a moment for us to steel ourselves for a resurgence of all the joys that SIP behind NAT can bring with an influx of new users pushed onto an unfamiliar technology due to changes on the providers' side of things.

While most providers should be able to make it work, we aren't quite in a world of ubiquitous IPv6 end-to-end connectivity yet, and there will be enough customers being promised "just plug in this extra box behind your existing router and it will work like before ", so it may take a few years to settle down.

Learning from the Digital TV switchover and "oh yes you will absolutely need a new aerial", without knowing what is already up there, hopefully any opportunistic scams aimed at more vulnerable customers are discovered and clamped down on.

In reply to a post by prlzx:

While most providers should be able to make it work, we aren't quite in a world of ubiquitous IPv6 end-to-end connectivity yet, and there will be enough customers being promised "just plug in this extra box behind your existing router and it will work like before ", so it may take a few years to settle down.

Happy WLR Stop Sell to you too! 😂

I'd sincerely hope that most ISPs that host their own voice solution, would have it just work "out of the box". My read is that most mom and pop type users will go down this route as it follows the path of least resistance. The complications may come with folk who want to do voice re-injection into their phone extension wiring or otherwise use handsets that are more than a quarter of a century old let's say.

Indy Voice / VoIP / SIP providers (call them what you will) may face some additional hurdles and challenges, however its 2023 and SIP mostly just works in my experience even with CGNAT and rubbish like that in the way. Saying that ATAs are generally the work of the devil. So yeah maybe hurdles.

The opportunistic scams are always there. Some human is always ready to prey on another. It's life unfortunately, we just need to be switched on to it, and protect those who otherwise cannot within reason.

Yes not meaning to be a doomsayer

I am just speculating on what happens if enough normal people are suddenly expected to learn about networking quirks just to use a telephone, unlike weird geeky types who buy VoIP equipment for fun and like playing with network kit.

There are surely correlations between people who have preferred to retain a traditional landline phone and not make all their calls from mobile (or may not have a smartphone), or that may not have any broadband connection on their line
and
people who don't regard a fixed telephone as a technology that needs new instructions in 2023 or for all telephones to need to become computing devices.
I have a neighbour in that category and I am anticipating questions unless their family helps out.

Let's say that there are 30 million households in the UK (ref. 2020 census). Even if the %age that will need assistance from a real person is small say 2% that will still be over a million people so I hope the ISP support model isn't planning to manage without increasing staffing.

With the Digital TV rollout a more limited set of use cases was more common with pre-determined responses (e.g. buy a compatible digital TV, keep analogue TV but add a set top box, portable TVs in other rooms, video recorders).
But you didn't really need to how it worked unless you were upgrading tuners in your PC.

Edited by prlzx (Tue 05-Sep-23 20:43:56)

Apparently there are 10M or so analogue lines in the UK that will need migration (or be ceased). A simplistic straight line reduction means 370,000 such lines will need to be done each month for the next 27 months. The vast majority of these will belong to BT, so one hopes their Digital Voice migration process is now super slick....

I have family in another city whose phone service is with BT (for historical reasons including a discount on nominated numbers) while their broadband is with a different ISP (because I originally helped them get broadband from Be Unlimited)
so
I have given them a general heads up that they should be hearing offers from both companies but am rather curious what the default migration will look like and whether they will receive any misinformation or sales pressure implying that they need to shift everything over to a BT product to keep their number or at the very least to receive any equivalent support for the service in case a problem.

Another relative was sort-of talked into an expensive upgrade involving digging up along the driveway (on a road without telegraph poles) in conjunction with being switched to digital voice a while ago.

This probably influences my other posts on the subject.

I'm sure I've heard someone say where the analogue phone service is BT but the broadband comes from someone else, BT will provide an extra line into the property for the BT digital voice service making the original line SOGEA

I'm not convinced there will be a problem - ISPs will support their services used with their supplied equipment, and the tiny minority of people choosing to go their own way will be expected to know how to make it all work, as is reasonable.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I'm not convinced there will be a problem - ISPs will support their services used with their supplied equipment, and the tiny minority of people choosing to go their own way will be expected to know how to make it all work, as is reasonable.

Provided the supplier has the staff in place to go round the houses where there is phone but no internet to re-site (or even install) the master socket if necessary, install a router, plug in the phone, install the battery back up if the customer is regarded as vulnerable and then talk the customer through the changes in an understandable manner as the odds are that those sort of houses will have residents who will need their hands held while changing over. A small percentage but quite a large number as was postulated earlier.

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

I'm sure I've heard someone say where the analogue phone service is BT but the broadband comes from someone else, BT will provide an extra line into the property for the BT digital voice service making the original line SOGEA

I read that if you have the split environment that both companies will write to the bill payer(s); and if nothing happens the data service will be ceased and the voice service provider will provide the appropriate hardware. Not great....

I would say that whatever someone said it was wrong, what new line will will BT install? As from yesterday there will be no new copper lines so if FTTP is not available what happens?