The end of copper phone lines.

[Agentgonzo]

Sorry I meant could you get FTTC?
We had FTTC before we switched to FTTP.

We have FTTC. That's pretty widespread nowadays. But the last mile (as Stu says) for a large amount of the UK is copper. Most places don't have the option of FTTP yet.

 

[Agentgonzo]

I'm confused, Does the UK have TV internet and phone over the same cable?

Yes. In times of old, the copper cables coming into the home only carried an analogue phone signal.

Then ADSL came along (1990s) and allowed both Internet (data) and the old analogue voice to be carried over the same cable. That's what all copper-based (from your house) internet connections use and what all non-fibre broadband uses.

The big switch-off mentioned in this thread is turning off the old analogue voice over these existing cables and making the copper cable to houses carry data only. The home broadband router will then do the voice<-->data conversion and you'll plug your phone into the router instead of the wall socket.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I'm confused, Does the UK have TV internet and phone over the same cable? I mean I know it's possible, but phonecables existed before TV cables. So which ones will be switched off?

Edit to add
I didn't see AG's post above this when I posted it.


I haven't had time to dig deeper but this is what BT are saying.

BT, who plan to retire their copper network as fibre is rolled out UK wide. In fact, they have already signalled that once an area is served by 75% fibre to the premises then no more copper-based services will be sold. Other providers are less reliant on copper twisted-pair cables in their networks and so for them, there is likely to be less disruptio

 

[Agentgonzo]

It may be that "once an area is served by 75% fibre to the premises then no new copper-based services will be sold (but existing copper-based services will continue to work"? Or it may by that they are meaning "to the cabinet" rather than "to the home".

A huge amount of the UK has copper to the cabinet with no alternative. They're not about to turn it off and disconnect a huge amount of the population.

 

[LeeH]

I wish we had the option of FTTP. We live in a rural setting and there are no plans for FTTP/cable

You never know…I was in the same situation but a little company (we have 50 properties here) Brought FTTP into the village as we could claim a voucher off the previous government.

950Mbps up/down.

 

[Druss]

It's definitely worth switching if possible.

I've had full fibre for almost a month now and it's a massive improvement from the old FTTC that we toiled with previously.

We've gone from an average Internet speed of 65mps with FTTC (often grindingly slow considering the sheer amount of devices we have perpetually connected) to 900mps with full fibre and we're only paying an extra tenner or so per month.

We could have gone cheaper, in fact cheaper than we were paying before and still had around 500mps guaranteed, but as others here, I have kids who are big gamers so the higher speed works better for that.

No more land line but the only calls we ever got were from some fella trying to sell us driveways, so it's no great loss

 

[Agentgonzo]

You never know…I was in the same situation but a little company (we have 50 properties here) Brought FTTP into the village as we could claim a voucher off the previous government.

950Mbps up/down.

We tried that as a village a few years ago. Couldn't get enough (a few hundred) to commit to it so it never went though

 

[Chippy_Tea]

No more land line but the only calls we ever got were from some fella trying to sell us driveways, so it's no great loss

Same here on the calls we never used the landline.

We were offered a voice service as Talk Talk supply a free small box that plugs into one ethernet port on the router and allows you to plug a standard landline phone into it and you keep your number seems to work well but I am glad to see the back of the old phone.

 

[hop-a-long]

This thread reminds me of a holliday in Scotland where the only internetconnection was at a local postoffice with a 28k modem. talk about shocking response times!