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[c6em]

Greetings all,

I have not been on the forum for many years since Gigaclear provide FTTP here.  We were one of their early commercial developments before they went into the BDUK program. My broadband from them just works without problems every day.

Like many others, I kept my BT line as a landline only service from BT at reduced line rental while using the broadband from Gigaclear.
Meanwhile BT never upgraded the area from ADSL2+ and it remains on this today.  Quite a number still use ADSL2+ and I gather the sync rates and speeds improved markedly once the majority of us left as the cross-talk in the cables became far less.  In reality only FTTP is the answer as the BT street boxes are very badly located for the house centres of the village, they serve a very wide area and the D side is 100% aluminium cabling. So a move to FTTC would only improve things for a few houses in the quite spread out village.

Into the mix now arrives BT digital voice…..

So what do we think BT are going to do for the landline only group and indeed those still using ADSL2+ broadband come the switch to digital voice. It seems to me either they give us landline only customers a home hub with only the BT digital voice part of the “broadband” enabled. But would that work over ADSL2+ anyway?  Alternatively BT could site the broadband hub equipment to provide the digital voice centrally in the exchange and our lines just continue exactly as present.  A third option would be to provide FTTP finally and ditch the ali' cabling forever, but that would be a lot of expense for maybe 30% or less of residents that are still using BT/ADSL2+ with no guarantee BT could temp Gigaclear customers back.

Whatever, I suspect us awkward squad group will be left till the last for the switch over.

Any thoughts?

[licquorice]

I don't think it has been fully decided yet. One option being considered for landline only customers, is providing the ATA in the exchange hence effectively no change at the customer premises.

[j0hn]

Any thoughts?

This might interest you.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/11/openreach-prep-alternative-uk-analogue-style-phone-product.html

SOTAP for analogue is not to be confused with normal SOTAP. They are very different.

I believe you need to have an active PSTN line to get it.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I think its pretty clear the end-goal is an ATA in the home with a temporary solution being looked into as a band-aid in the meantime.

BT’s chosen name alludes to this as still being a transitional (temporary) product

I mean the ultimate goal must be to get rid of all the E side cabling as its expensive to maintain, but that's likely still a long way away for these remote areas.  I'd imagine the idea is to sweat the old cable until they have so many faulty pairs its cheaper to roll out fibre than to fix it.