Our Landline Just Went Digital

[renegadefm]

Had a text out of the blue from EE this morning saying that your landline has just gone digital and needs to be plugged into the green socket at the back of your broadband router, otherwise it won't work. 

 

We assumed it was a scam at first, but then noticed the phone line was dead if plugged into the normal socket, but now works from the router. 

 

Problem is our wireless extension phones in the kitchen and bedroom no longer work. I don't understand why they won't work as they pick up the wireless signal from the base phone. 

 

Plus what concerns me if the phone runs from the router, if we have a power cut we won't have a working landline phone.

 

Problem is my parents only use their landline phone to ring us on our landline phone as they can't use mobile phones, so in the event of a power cut, they won't be able to get hold of us. 

 

Is this digital roll out happening all over the UK? 

[barry1010]

Same with my landline, 237 - a very popular BT Truecall phone that I've had for years.  It is only casually mentioned that it won't work in a power cut on a page towards the back of the booklet. 

I bet a lot of people have similar phones and don't realise it won't work in a power cut.

[Rosetta]

 BT realised they got it seriously wrong. I wish it werent too late for us because we were told we couldn't switch back to the old landline

[gingejbee]

This is what I meant the link to be...

 

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-13264829/BT-pauses-digital-phone-line-rollout-including-thousands-vulnerable-households.html

[jourdain2]

Hard lines, reneg...   Like Rosetta, we have a weak to non-existent mobile signal in  the house - OH can't manage to use even the  simplest mobile  phone anyway.  Everything isnow digital.  We've had 3 power cuts thisyear - one was over 24 hrs. - and we were isolated.  New 'landline' phone upstairs won't work, leading to risk of accidents as we try to get down before it stops ringing.   It's a nightmare and no-one seems to care.

A couple of weeks ago my daughters insisted I  had one of their used 'clever' phones - but I didn't know that i had toturn it to 'reoaming' or how  to do it - so  we were  still cut off!

[Rosetta]

Jourdain did you mean "roaming"

[Old_Geezer]

Relying on the Internet network instead of maintaining your company's own, for customers who may not have a mobile phone, smart or basic. What could possibly go wrong ?

[barry1010]

Jourdain, you only use 'roaming' when you are using the phone abroad and that can be expensive.

When you lose the wifi at home the phone should automatically switch to 4G or 5G - data - but that is only for the internet, not phone calls.

[renegadefm]

I just tried plugging the phone back in the normal socket on the wall and there's no dial tone. 

 

Something my partner just thought off is what happens if we change broadband companies? Would we temporarily lose the landline phone? 

[barry1010]

Having the old style phone system doesn't guarantee you will always be connected, there has been times when that has been 'down' too.

[barry1010]

The new 'switch' service for broadband should ensure that down time when switching provider is minimal, it should be no more than one working day.

[jourdain2]

Not knowing much about these things I thought they said 'roaming'.  It was useless otherwise - I thought it was quiet - which was quite nice in  some ways.  As you get older and less able - at the moment we are both struggling a lot just to manage day to day. No quibbles, we can stagger by, but both of us are post op., I had an unexpected bleed ----- and it doesn't feel good to be isolated from the world.

Thanks to the  wonderful  people in our village, we coped and all was well - but it is unsettling to say the least.  

What should I switch the phone to now that I have found how to change its receptor?

[jourdain2]

Barry - nothing switched to anything, it was all dead.   :(

[jourdain2]

One working day, when you are both post-op and 1 of you will be 91 on Sunday (with  triple bypass, skin cancer etc. etc.) is one heck  of a long time, barry.   x

[Canary42]

As I get tired of emphasising, once they're privatised, Public Services are no longer interested in people, just profits.  So Service suffers. The so-called Regulators are about as effective as a chocolate fireguard.

[Tuvok]

I'm assuming you only have cordless phones - ie. one base station and additional handsers with chargers.

If so, then if there was a powercut you would not have had a phone then unless you had a non mains operated phone as well.

Did you get an adapter to plug in between the router and the phone?

Can you make/receive calls?

If you can, then there is no reason why the additional handsets don't work.  Perhaps reregister them to the base station.

[Buenchico]

Under Ofcom rules, where customers would be unable to contact the emergency services during a power cut (e.g. because they don't own a mobile phone), phone service providers must provide a back-up solution (such as a battery pack which can be used to power their router), free of charge:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/future-of-landline-calls

[Canary42]

/// Under Ofcom rules... phone service providers must provide a back-up solution ///

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... and if they don't ?   Nothing. 

[Canary42]

Barry is right about the old-style sytem also going down sometimes. I remember after the Greeat Storm of 1987, any subscriber on the exchange I was on who picked up their handset didn't get a dialling tone, they were immediately connected to anyone else who had done the same - and stayed connected. It was chaos (and obviously couldn't be reported) with an ever increasing number of victims which existed for many hours before being remedied.

[Barsel]

What about buying a phone like this that runs on batteries?

Would this still work if there was a power cut?

[Buenchico]

^^^ Have you omitted a link, Barsel?