BT digital voice

[SootySport]

On 29/05/2022 at 21:04, corsechris said:

Copper will be fine (assuming your copper is actually fine!).

 

Well, I say copper, they replaced it with aluminium years ago ‘cos it’s cheaper….and crapper of course….

 

Used to have broadband supplied by Orange many years ago and that had a VOIP port on the router. Worked fine really. I do recall lots of issues when we switched from the PABX to VOIP phones at work, and the voice quality was often pretty bad, and of course, whoever specced the phones cheaped out and as we were always short of CAT5 port capacity, the computers usually ended up being daisy-chained off the phones, which only had 100Mbps switches in them rather than 1Gbps (because cheap), so that sucked…

 

Voice really doesn’t need that much bandwidth though so it should work fine on even a pretty bad broadband.

Aluminium cables were only layed in the late seventies and early eighties due to cost of copper rocketing in price. About 15% of the total network is aluminium and no plans to replace unless the whole length of the cable deteriorates into a pile of dust.

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

14 hours ago, Blatman said:

Yes. The base station will connect to the hub they send you, then the 4 cordless phones will talk to the hub the same way they do now.

Thanks Blatters! 

[Blatman]

Couple of things might need clearing up that I think are worth mentioning.

First, I'm sure some of you are thinking "I've had fibre broadband for ages". Yes, for about the last 14 or so years, all internet providers have offered "fibre broadband". For the vast majority of dwellings this was/is an internet connection that uses the copper phone line, but only between the phone socket in the dwelling and the local street box, those big green boxes we see on the sides of the road, often at or near road junctions. From the street box back to the exchange the connection is fibre. This is called FTTC, or Fibre To The Cabinet. It's usually fast enough for most uses, is very reliable and reaches almost all UK homes though some rural communities are still without "fast" broadband.

 

The "full fibre" being advertised now by Mr Bacon (and that stupid "land a plane" nonsense), Sky, BT et al is the roll-out of fibre that comes all the way to our homes. The "wholesale" name for this is Gigafast. This is Fibre To The Premises, or FTTP. Currently around 20%ish of homes have this capability although I don't know how this is measured because if I go on to BT's site, it says I can't have it, but I do have fibre to my premises through Virgin. More on that shortly, but for now I suspect the percentage of homes covered relies on the Openreach statistics as Openreach are by far the biggest infrastructure owner and provider.

 

BT will be switching off the "analogue" phone system by 2025. This has been planned for a long time. I have a feeling the old ISDN service is being switched off this year or next year so service providers are already rolling out something similar to the "Digital Voice" service for ISDN users. You may hear it described as "Hosted VoIP" and you may be aware of companies like RingCentral (there are hundreds of others) who provide this service which is a full telephone service mostly aimed at businesses, delivered via the internet. These services have been available for around a decade or more and are a very mature and reliable service. Essentially BT's new Digital Voice service is this, a hosted VoIP service. The key difference is that until every dwelling has an actual fibre terminating at or near where the current BT master socket is, the internet and telephone connection will still use the copper phone lines. BT are providing new hubs that have the familiar BT socket on the back to which we can connect our current analogue phones. The BT Hub will convert the analogue signal from the phone to IP and the call will happen entirely normally from the users perspective. 

When homes receive the fibre connection the phone and internet services will be switched over to that. I suspect another new hub will arrive as the connection from the hub to the wall socket will likely change from BT phone cable to CAT 6 or maybe even CAT 7 ethernet cable. Again this is nothing to worry about, it's just a cable with different looking ends to what we are used to.

Now, where I have said "BT", whatever service provider is providing internet and phone lines to your home will likely be going through a similar process, IE sending a new internet router with a BT socket on the back to allow analogue phones to work as normal. I haven't checked them all (I have a life, almost...) but as a quick sample, here's Sky's page explaining what will happen for their subscribers when BT switch off the analogue lines. https://www.sky.com/help/articles/about-internet-calls

I'm in a slightly odd position in that I still have a phone line with BT with the internet over it coming from Sky. I am sure this is a rare occurrence these days so that's going to be interesting, and almost certainly very annoying when the argument starts as to who should provide my VoIP hub!!!

 

I mentioned the roll-out numbers and that I have fibre to the premises already, from Virgin Media. This is an entirely separate connection to the BT phone line that carries the phone and the Sky internet connection for the rest of the house. So yes, there are currently two internet connections at my house, I won't bore you all with why!!!

I am reasonably sure the powers that be (OfCom) don't include "private" company infrastructure (like Virgin, CommunityFibre, G-Fast etc) in their calculation or the number of dwellings that have "full fibre" capability is likely to be higher. At the moment the best place to check what internet is available to your dwelling is to use one of the "switching" websites like U-Switch. I'm usually not a fan of these switching sites but they do at least look at most if not all of the market. If after checking it looks like there is a cheaper or faster option (depending on what one needs) than what one has already then either follow the U-Switch buying option or go to the company website and do some more checking.

 

With the switch to VoIP calls there is one more VERY IMPORTANT thing to understand, and it is a CRITICAL SAFETY ISSUE. With analogue lines, they carry power from the exchange to home to power the phone(s) connected to them. However when a phone system uses VoIP/the internet if there is a power cut to the premises THE VOIP SYSTEM WILL NOT WORK. In business where this is a potential risk, an Uninterruptable Power Supply (essentially a big box of batteries) can be installed to allow for a bit of extra time (around 15 to 30 mins is common, depending on UPS size) before the system dies. So, if the current analogue phone line is used for a CRITICAL SERVICE like health monitoring or alarm monitoring for example, or even to call the emergency services, you must speak to the phone line provider to discuss what the options and contingencies are when the switch to "Digital Voice" happens.

 

Back to my experience with Virgin fibre as mentioned earlier. For what it's worth, I had no idea Virgin had laid fibre past my house. I had a sales guy actually knock on my door! I was very surprised, and delighted as I discussed a deal and signed up straight away. There was a small charge for installation (50 quid) as they have to join the fibre in the street to a junction box they provided attached to my house, then pull the cable inside and install the internal connection hardware on the wall. But the subscription cost, speed and contract length mean that the total cost (TCO) amortised over the 2 year contract length is just 2 quid a month more than FTTC broadband. That said, there is no phone service on the fibre. I could have had one but I don't need it. If I had a phone service too then it would have been more expensive than the current analogue phone line and internet costs that are still in use in other parts of the house, but on a £ per Mb/s of speed for the internet compared to FTTC, it's as cheap as chips and in the three-ish months it's been running it's been as reliable as sunrise...

 

Anyway, I hope some of this is useful, if somewhat dull...

[Captain Colonial]

46 minutes ago, Blatman said:

The "full fibre" being advertised now by Mr Bacon (and that stupid "land a plane" nonsense)

I so agree.  It’s like a laxative - it irritates the 💩 out of me every time it comes on the telly.  They no more landed that plane from their home than I did.  They watched a plane land in perfect VFR conditions into a very quiet airport.  The pilots would have seen that runway from about 12 miles out without the help of the suburban family.  Whoop-de-flipping-do.  The minute something patronises me and treats me like I’m five years old, they lose me completely. 🤦‍♂️🙄

[Blatman]

It's interesting the different viewpoints too. I hadn't even thought about the airport much, nor the conditions or visibility or whatever. I was thinking about the amount of "data" coming down the internet connection. 4K video compressed to H.265 is around 15Mb/s, and it's one picture, they just spread it across 4 commercial screens. They need an expensive graphics card for that, it's got nowt to do with internet speed. Then there's the maps and radar/radio data which I'm betting doesn't get much beyond 20Mb/s. So for me they could have used our regular FTTC fibre internet and done exactly the same thing.

And then the "can connect more than 100 devices". Yeah, we can do that now. 100 connected devices is not the same as 100 connected devices that are all streaming at the same time. Then you need lots of speed/bandwidth. But with ads like this which take a somewhat simplistic view which people take as "facts", it's easy to see why this subject is wildly mis-understood and like you, causes me to reach for the andrex...

[DamperMan]

We (Spax)was using about 2 yearsago  a big fat switch on the wall, 3 or 4 Isdn lines and something like 14 phones.   During a power spike the switch let out a puff of black smoke.  A short term solution was the main number was put on to a normal line and one inward bound phone..  for about a week.  I bought a suitable power supply for the switch crossed my fingers and it worked and luck was in.     Knowing this was all old tech I looked into VoIP .   The major advantage was that there is no hardware other than the physical phone and to use the existing cat5e network.  Internet cost is cheaper than the old ISDN lines.   Performance has been faultless.     The only major down side is that the BT online system for setting up out of hours messages, opening times,  and so forth is impossible for a fairly tech savy person like me.    I had to get BT’s crack team to set it up as non of there normal team could make it work either.

 

The YeaLink Chinese phones work fine , don’t feel as nice as the old Siemens phones.  Having paid BT for the YeaLink I’d of hoped BT would of put there name on them.   
 

yes if the electric goes off the phones don’t work.    But neither do the computers or much else.  They come back to life quicker than the old switch did after a power outage.   Daisy chaining some of the PC’s off the phones has made no difference to PC performance.  We are not watching HD movies.   For us it’s been a positive move.     The odd Rare fax automatically gets converted into an email which is nice.   

[Stuart]

Next question then. I don't use the router from my ISP. I use a Billion one instead. Works very well and I know my way around its interface. Given that the connections will change, I presume this will force me to either do without a landline, use the new ISP router or buy a new Billion? 

[geoffd]

I have a VOIP service for my business line (I work from home).  I was given an interface box that plugs into my router, and the phone plugs into that.  So maybe if you have your own router, this is an option.

[Stuart]

Thanks @geoffd  But Blatters also suggested that the cable type between the router and the BT socket will change 

[geoffd]

In this case, it's an ordinary ethernet network cable.  The router I use (from Plusnet) is quite a few years old now, it just has ethernet sockets.

 

I have seen new routers with sockets for both ethernet cables and RJ45 phone lines - I expect this is what Blatters was referring to.

[Blatman]

3 hours ago, Stuart said:

Thanks @geoffd  But Blatters also suggested that the cable type between the router and the BT socket will change 

 

I said I suspect the connection will change once BT install the fibre to the premises. Either the fibre will be terminated to a "master socket" with an RJ45 in place of the familiar BT socket we now have to connect the internal equipment, or new "full fibre" routers/hubs will connect to the "master socket" with a fibre patch cable. My money is on copper between the new "full fibre" routers and the "master socket" 'cos copper cables are far more resilient and robust than fibre. And remember this will be a second new router. The ones coming "now" are going to connect to the current phone lines which will be utilised until an actual fibre is pulled into your dwelling, which won't go un-noticed 'cos you'll have to be home between 8 and 6...

 

As for what you would have to do Stuart, that's a question for the provider. My guess is that if one chooses to use a router other than the ISP supplied item then one must bear the cost of upgrades if the underlying infrastructure changes and one wishes to keep not using the ISP supplied hardware. I'm in the same boat for some of my smaller customers. We rarely use ISP supplied hardware so for a handful of customers we will have to come up with an alternative which might be a bit of a faff at the beginning. I will look in to this in more detail, but not yet. It's still very very early on in this process and developments around this will be happening, so I'm going to watch this space. I assume we will get letters giving us a fair bit of notice of an engineer coming to pull fibre in. That will trigger me to ask the questions I need to ask so that the current internal infrastructure can remain functional. There's bound to be some additional cost involved and there's probably not much that can be done about that.

 

For what it's worth, the internal connection from my Virgin router to the fibre "master socket" uses co-ax, but that's becasue co-ax is what Virgin has. They bought the old Cable and Wireless / Telewest cable TV network which is all co-ax, so they are sticking with what they know. Just about all other networks will, I imagine, use CAT6 or CAT 7 for the link from router to "master socket".

Oh yeah, don't be surprised if, when the fibre comes in they ask to place the new "master socket" near a mains plug 'cos yes, they will probably need to be powered. My Virgin master socket is mains powered and I know the Hyperoptic fibre master sockets are mains powered as well.

[Blatman]

Here's the BT full fibre installation info. ONT was the acronym I couldn't remember which is what the "master socket" is for full fibre...

 

https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/full-fibre/how-is-full-fibre-installed

 

Fibre comes in to the ONT, CAT cable comes out to connect to the Hub/router. And as I suspected, the ONT needs power.

 

The upshot is much faster internet, no more RJ11 sockets on the router and no more DSL filters on the phone line to split the phone signal from the internet signal.

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

I don't know how my 'phone cable enters my house (or electricity for that matter) as there are no wires visible outside. I'd like it to remain like that. It must irritate some neighbours (if they have noticed) that they all seem to have at least BT cables suspended from poles and in some cases they have electricity cables strung across too. We, for some unknown reason, have none. With dense tree cover in abundance it's obviously better to have underground cables where possible. Added a catenary cable/fibre bundle will not be 'progress'.

[corsechris]

Maybe they'll resurrect ‘sewernet’. 

[Blatman]

15 minutes ago, Man On The Clapham Omnibus said:

I don't know how my 'phone cable enters my house (or electricity for that matter) as there are no wires visible outside. I'd like it to remain like that. It must irritate some neighbours (if they have noticed) that they all seem to have at least BT cables suspended from poles and in some cases they have electricity cables strung across too. We, for some unknown reason, have none. With dense tree cover in abundance it's obviously better to have underground cables where possible. Added a catenary cable/fibre bundle will not be 'progress'.

 

If you can't see the cable from the BT master socket then it's probably been chased in to a wall or goes straight under the floor and the external ductwork may well be hidden. Any chance of a picture? And where is the master socket? I don't have much experience with phone lines that arrive on a pole. In fact I think I have just one customer with above ground phone lines and in his case the nearest pole also serves as a DP, or Distribution Point, so there is other hardware located on or adjacent to the pole.

Based on my experience with similar installs I suspect the fibre will be pulled (well, blown actually, but I digress) along the same ductwork to pop out adjacent to the current master socket. Is there a mains plug near the current BT master socket? Bearing in mind that I think you are many many months, if not years away from having to worry about this...

 

7 minutes ago, corsechris said:

Maybe they'll resurrect ‘sewernet’. 

 

There was also a plan to provide internet along the national grid lines back in the day in a way similar to how "homeplugs" work. That never went anywhere either...