BT phone line/service 'upgrade'

[JohnW2]

My understanding is that telephone exchanges have robust backup power from batteries and generators, while cabinents and mobile masts have limited backup batteries at best and nothing at worst.

I think traditional exchanges ran on massive banks of batteries, didn't they?

In terms of the 'traditional' service, I don't see that there would ever have been any need for a backup power supply in cabinets, since if there was not an intact copper path back to the exchange, and the exchange adequately powered, the system would not have worked, anyway!

 

[JohnW2]

You will know if the system has changed from 'landline' from exchange to 'landline' from Broadband Cab as you will have to dial all 11 digits of your neighbours number. That is the most obvious part of the change.

Yes, I know that, since we were 'warned' about that in all their communications.

However, if, as you imply, we have change to " 'landline' from Broadband Cabinet", then, as I've previously asked, does that mean that they have had to install analogue-digital converters in the cabinets?

 

[JohnW2]

If/when you move to fibre, it will need a fibre router, with a phone port, to give the line an IP number.

Indeed - but, as I've said, the connections to our houses have not (yet) been moved to fibre. Something was 'changed' last week, but I'm still not clear as to exactly what!

 

[morqthana]

I'm due to get exactly the same "upgrade".

Interesting to unpick the aspects of this.

According to the letter received from BT my home "phone service is about to get a whole lot better". I will "get an enhanced call plan, which includes calls to any UK mobile and landline numbers - at any time of the day".

Looks like a sweetener to increase customer satisfaction. Call plans are unrelated to the infrastructure the calls run over.

"On the day of the upgrade the engineer will carry out work remotely at the exchange." "You can continue to use your current phone and phone number and don't need any new equipment."

Which means, I'm sure, they're turning off the analogue phone service, and you will continue to use your current phone by plugging it into the back of your broadband modem. I'm guessing they know you can do that as you're a BT Broadband customer, so they know you have one of their Home Hubs?

"There is one significant change, though. You'll need to add the area code to all outgoing calls."

TBH, everyone with a mobile phone has done that since day 1, so it's not much of a culture shock.

"Your phone still works of there's a power cut"

So, my conclusion from that lot is that the backend somewhere is going digital and the bit between the BT street cabinet and my house is staying the same, copper wires backed up by a battery in the cabinet.

Now that is an interesting claim. Their street cabinets do have battery backup, although not a lot. https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/f...ained-supplies-in-the-fttc-cabinets.html?vc=1

But if your house loses power, your broadband modem dies, and your phone stops working.

 

[plugwash]

I think traditional exchanges ran on massive banks of batteries, didn't they?

My understanding is that telephone exchanges traditionally used, and largely still use a -48V supply with massive battery banks and then power supplies to top-up those battery banks from mains or generator.

In terms of the 'traditional' service, I don't see that there would ever have been any need for a backup power supply in cabinets,

Indeed, traditional "PCP" cabinets were and are just patch cabinets. No active gear inside, no power supply.

These were supplemented by FTTC cabinets, which were connected to the PCP cabinet via "tie pairs". These contain DSLAMs for FTTC sevice. When you ordered FTTC (misleadingly marketed as "fiber") broadband service then your line was re-patched in the PCP cabinet to run via the FTTC cabinet. Your VDSL sevice was terminated in the FTTC cabinet, while your voice service ran back to the exchange in the traditional manner.

BT has tried to push customers away from analog voice lines towards VOIP sevices, delivered over VDSL or FTTP, with an eventual goal of decommissioning the traditional analog voice network but this push has seen significant resistance.

What I fear may be happening now now is BT changing the equipment in the FTTC cabinents, so they can provide analogue voice service (backhauled over VOIP), as well as VDSL service from the FTTC cabinent and hence eliminate the analogue lines from exchange to cabinet.

But that last bit is just a guess, I haven't heard anything from insiders.

 

[JohnW2]

Which means, I'm sure, they're turning off the analogue phone service, and you will continue to use your current phone by plugging it into the back of your broadband modem. I'm guessing they know you can do that as you're a BT Broadband customer, so they know you have one of their Home Hubs?

I'm definitely not a BT Broadband Customer. ... and my broadband connection comes through 'the ether', not through any copper conductor or optical fibre cable.

In any event, whilst you may be 'sure' that they have turned off my analogue phone service, they could not have been telling the truth about all the work being done "remotely at the exchange", since they would have had to install analogue-digital conversion to their cabinet for my phone to continue working (which it does, whilst simply plugged into a 'BT phone socket').

 

[pcaouolte]

Which means, I'm sure, they're turning off the analogue phone service, and you will continue to use your current phone by plugging it into the back of your broadband modem. I'm guessing they know you can do that as you're a BT Broadband customer, so they know you have one of their Home Hubs?

No definitely not. I'm not a BT Broadband customer, I don't have one of their home hubs and, as far as they know, I might have no internet connection at all.

if your house loses power, your broadband modem dies, and your phone stops working.

It won't because it doesn't (and wont in future) plug into the router. It plugs into a BT analogue socket.

 

[JohnW2]

No definitely not. I'm not a BT Broadband customer, I don't have one of their home hubs and, as far as they know, I might have no internet connection at all.

As I said, the same with me.

It won't because it doesn't (and wont in future) plug into the router. It plugs into a BT analogue socket.

Again, ditto here.

 

[morqthana]

I'm definitely not a BT Broadband Customer. ... and my broadband connection comes through 'the ether', not through any copper conductor or optical fibre cable.

In any event, whilst you may be 'sure' that they have turned off my analogue phone service, they could not have been telling the truth about all the work being done "remotely at the exchange", since they would have had to install analogue-digital conversion to their cabinet for my phone to continue working (which it does, whilst simply plugged into a 'BT phone socket').

Yes, well, see my post below. My knowledge was out of date. Sorry.

No definitely not. I'm not a BT Broadband customer, I don't have one of their home hubs and, as far as they know, I might have no internet connection at all.

It won't because it doesn't (and wont in future) plug into the router. It plugs into a BT analogue socket.

Ditto.

 

[morqthana]

Well, every day is a school-day.

I'm due to get exactly the same "upgrade".
According to the letter received from BT my home "phone service is about to get a whole lot better". I will "get an enhanced call plan, which includes calls to any UK mobile and landline numbers - at any time of the day". "On the day of the upgrade the engineer will carry out work remotely at the exchange." "You can continue to use your current phone and phone number and don't need any new equipment."
"There is one significant change, though. You'll need to add the area code to all outgoing calls."
"Your phone still works of there's a power cut"

Yep, I received a letter identical to that.

That letter is mentioned here: https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/voip/4782586-bt-dv-via-exchange-without-router.html?view=collapsed and that thread mentions digital voice delivered that way being discussed elsewhere on the site, but I've not found it.

But it seems as though continued support of analogue phones still plugged into the NTE5, not a broadband modem is a thing.

As I've said, in my case the bit between the exchange and the street cabinet was 'upgraded' to fibre several years ago, with copper from there to all the houses (as remains the case today)

"Upgraded", or augmented? Did they just add fibre cables and leave all the copper in place?

- so that still leaves me wondering what they actually changed last week. As you imply, there has to be some ongoing power source for our phones, either from batteries in the cabinet or via persisting copper back to the exchange.

Maybe the communication between exchange and cabinet was analogue until last week, and is now digital - which would presumably require a two-way analogue-to-digital converter to have been installed in the cabinet?

It looks as though that's what they must be doing - moving the analogue to VoIP interface up the line, from the modem to the cabinet.

These were supplemented by FTTC cabinets, which were connected to the PCP cabinet via "tie pairs". These contain DSLAMs for FTTC sevice. When you ordered FTTC (misleadingly marketed as "fiber") broadband service then your line was re-patched in the PCP cabinet to run via the FTTC cabinet. Your VDSL sevice was terminated in the FTTC cabinet, while your voice service ran back to the exchange in the traditional manner.

Can DSLAMs be upgraded to do analogue/VoIP conversion, and generate an analogue service from the cabinet to the customer's property?

BT has tried to push customers away from analog voice lines towards VOIP sevices, delivered over VDSL or FTTP, with an eventual goal of decommissioning the traditional analog voice network but this push has seen significant resistance.

Significant disgruntlement, yes, but there's never been anything any customer could to to "resist" the switch-off.

BT was trying to force everyone onto "digital voice" services where the voice traffic is carried using VOIP over the customer's broadband connection, but evidently that is not working out or at least not as quickly as they would have liked.

I know that the alarm companies (burglar and personal emergency asistance) have been sorely trying the patience of Openreach with their foot-dragging. Have OR finally given in?

What I fear may be happening now now is BT changing the equipment in the FTTC cabinents, so they can provide analogue voice service (backhauled over VOIP), as well as VDSL service from the FTTC cabinent and hence eliminate the analogue lines from exchange to cabinet.

"Fear"? What's wrong with it? OK - cabinet equipment upgrade costs, but it still allows them to achieve their main aim:

Moving voice onto the fiber to the cabinet infrastructure, if that is indeed what they are doing, accomodates BT's goal of closing many telephone exchanges and massively reducing their copper network. Of course it comes at the cost of reliability.

What I'm wondering now is whether those of us already fully switched off will have our cabinets upgraded to move our "VoIP point" to there?

But that last bit is just a guess, I haven't heard anything from insiders.

Do we have any "insiders" on the Alarms, CCTV & Telephones forum?

 

[JohnW2]

Well, every day is a school-day. .... .... But it seems as though continued support of analogue phones still plugged into the NTE5, not a broadband modem is a thing.

Yes, definitely 'a thing' - as witness the proof of the analogue (as far as I am concerned) telephone service I still have today.

"Upgraded", or augmented? Did they just add fibre cables and leave all the copper in place?

As I implied, I presume it was 'augmented', with the copper still in place. Otherwise they would have had to install batteries (and an LV power feed to charge them) in every cabinet.

It looks as though that's what they must be doing - moving the analogue to VoIP interface up the line, from the modem to the cabinet.

.... but, as I've said, it doesn't appear that they did that. The work was all completed in an hour or two, allegedly 'remotely from the exchange', and I've seen no evidence of anyone (either on that day or previously) installing A-D conversion kit in the cabinets.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I think traditional exchanges ran on massive banks of batteries, didn't they?

Yes, and absolutely massive. I worked in the main Leeds exchange - three floors of switch racks, and a large basement, filled with massive submarine batteries, heavy, copper, 50v dc bus bars run everywhere.

 

[morqthana]

.... but, as I've said, it doesn't appear that they did that. The work was all completed in an hour or two, allegedly 'remotely from the exchange', and I've seen no evidence of anyone (either on that day or previously) installing A-D conversion kit in the cabinets.

From a generic technology perspective, is there any reason why a DSLAM should not have the capability of doing D/A conversion, and only require new software to be flashed onto it to turn it on?

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

As I implied, I presume it was 'augmented', with the copper still in place. Otherwise they would have had to install batteries (and an LV power feed to charge them) in every cabinet.

An alternative idea, might be that the fibre cabinets, don't need any power/booster amps in them. They could be just places to joint the fibres? They would need power, where the fibre exchange cable went into a cab, and came out as copper analogue.

 

[plugwash]

Can DSLAMs be upgraded to do analogue/VoIP conversion, and generate an analogue service from the cabinet to the customer's property?

At worst, I'd imagine such an upgrade would mean replacing the "line cards" in the cabinet. I would be very suprised if whatever supplier BT are using for the equipment in their cabinets didn't have support for integrated voice provision.

Significant disgruntlement, yes, but there's never been anything any customer could to to "resist" the switch-off.

Ultimately people can do two things.

1. Ignore any attempts to persuade them to move them over to VOIP services, forcing BT to choose between cutting them off completely or implementing a soloution on the BT side.
2. Make noise in the direction of their elected representitives, who have the power to regulate BT. Point out the special cases (for example emermgency phones) for which no easy alternative to analog phone service is available.

"Fear"? What's wrong with it? OK - cabinet equipment upgrade costs, but it still allows them to achieve their main aim:

BT are trying to replace a system with substantial resiliency against power cuts with one with far-less such resiliency.

What I'm wondering now is whether those of us already fully switched off will have our cabinets upgraded to move our "VoIP point" to there?

I doubt it.