Hello everyone,
I know some of you may well be aware of this or, for that matter, have no landline anyway these days, but it is a fact that our landline calls will not be delivered along the old copper wires in the not very distant future. You may have already received correspondence from BT and others on this matter over the last few months, encouraging you to make the switch sooner rather than later. A recent communication to me from the Neighbourhood Watch organisation raised the issue of getting information out to people in our own areas, especially those who might feel more vulnerable and uncertain in these digitally dependant days so thought it might be helpful to pass on my experience of the situation when we moved across recently to perhaps help reassure some of you who may be a little unsettled by the very thought of it.
Firstly, I’ll start off by saying that we found the change over process very easy and painless while the results have been excellent and you wouldn’t know that anything had really happened. Some points to make though which might be both helpful and reassuring to know:
- My initial concern when I received the letter from BT was that, if they were going to switch off the copper wire for landline numbers, where would that leave our broadband? Sadly there are still quite a number properties in our parish who are still not able to receive high speed fibre broadband, nor do we have a reliable mobile 4G signal in all areas to use instead. BT assured me that the copper wire will continue to bring us our broadband until such times that we are provided with other reliable means so we don’t appear to have that worry.
- In almost all situations, we can continue to use our current phones and the only thing that needs to be done is someone to call to plug your phone cable into the appropriate socket in the back of the router – this took about 30 seconds in our case! The main work is done behind the scenes at the exchange and the system is up and running in a very short space of time.
- They also provided us with a spare back-up digital phone, together with a digital adapter plug (we’ve never had to use this as our existing cordless system still works perfectly) and, when they knew that our mobile signal in the house was unreliable and how old we were and thus now officially classed by them as ‘vulnerable’ (bless!), they also include a battery pack which will keep the router going for an hour or so in the event of a power cut so we can still maintain phone contact with the outside world. I now just now have to ensure that, if I’m going keel over with a dicky ticker or something, it needs to occur in the first hour of a power outage!
- It didn’t cost us anything and there were no changes to our current contract required – a result all round!
I know that some of you may still have some concerns, especially if you have no broadband or a mobile phone, but did find this piece here on the Age UK website which, hopefully, may answer further questions you may have and reassure you that, when you dip your toes into the uncharted waters of Digital Voice, you might find they’re not as deep as you might imagine.
Thanks,
Michael