iDNET to Migrate Entire UK Phone Network to All-IP with BT

[J!ll]

At last!  Something on the BBC about this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58233420

Besides landline phones, lots of systems currently rely on the PSTN, including:

home burglar alarms and security systems
public traffic lights
cash machines
railway signals
motorway signs
And they will all have to switch to fully digital alternatives.     

[Clive]

Sounds very well planned to me!   

[nowster]

One hopes that when this starts to roll out properly there will be something you can just put next to the current master socket which you can then wire your existing extension wiring to.

Setting up a SIP ATA is not too much different to setting up a DSL modem: user, password, server address, and possibly a couple of other setting choices.

[talos]

I hope they make it simple for non techies like me. If I cant just plug it in Ill be lost. And it needs to be able to run the system I have now, Eg  answer Mc , amplifier ( for my missus who is deaf ) call blocker with caller display etc.

[Simon]

Yes, a call blocker is essential.  Imagine the fun the scammers could have with this? 

[stan]

Following on from my earlier mention of my neighbour and his new Sky "Superfast" contract (which I believe is for 18 months) and having looked at their advertising online I can see what "robinc" was saying about their router having an ATA box built in - they refer to it in black and white.

"Talos" has just mentioned features that he hopes will be available with any new system.  I can only add that, when speaking to Steve Waters and looking at the specification of the VOIP phones that will be available, it looks as thought they would carry out any task asked of them ... to say that they were full of advanced features would, to me at least, be an understatement. Far more advanced than I would ever need.

But as for the more simple option of plugging our existing phones in to some supplementary box of tricks (which I guess is what they're calling an ATA) I have no idea.

We all realise that the apparent cut-off date is December 2025 ... four years away.  When you put it like that we might wonder what we're worrying about - so maybe the powers that be at IDNet consider it too early to be telling customers what's what - and I imagine whatever they did say could all change by then. But, apparently, lots of business users are already hooked up to the new arrangement and it would seem obvious that ISPs would want to get geared up well before the cut-off date so I still think it would be nice to be kept a liitle better informed.

Does anyone at IDNet get to see these discussions?

[Simon]

IDNet do have access to the forums, and they have occasionally corresponded.

[stan]

 

[stan]

Lyndsey Fussel, Ofcom's networks and communications group director was on Radio 4's consumer programme 'You and Yours' just a few minutes ago.

A very confidently spoken lady she has assured us all that by 2025 no-one should be left without a landline of one sort or another to use in case of emergency and that the move to VOIP is set in stone and going ahead no matter what.

She made the case for ultimately getting rid of copper due to it's age and fragility and sounded supremely confident that the swap to VOIP should just be a case of plugging our phones in to our routers and all will be well.

There was mention made of customers in remote areas who were concerned about the loss of a landline phone (which, as we know, receives its power from a central source in the exchange) and who had difficulty in getting a reply from BT when wanting to ask what was planned for them ...  and, following intervention from the programme's representatives, were suddenly told they could have a back up battery for their phone in cases of a power cut.

So, fortunately, we can rest assured there won't be a problem because the companies who provide service to customers will, in one way or another, overcome the problems of care-lines and alarms and traffic lights and all the other paraphernalia that relies on landlines.

Happy days.

[talos]

We are classed as in remote area,(3 miles from Cardigan  ) all wiring telephone and elec are on overhead cables.  cant even get decent mobile coverage, so be interesting to see how its done.

[sn]

I expect the lady will suddenly find an irrepressible job offer comes up around 2024

[Den]

Besides landline phones, lots of systems currently rely on the PSTN, including:

home burglar alarms and security systems
public traffic lights
cash machines
railway signals
motorway signs
And they will all have to switch to fully digital alternatives.     

We have been taking intruder alarms and security systems off PSTN for ages now.

Even BT Redcare has changed with the primary on your WiFi and the secondry over a mobile network.

[Tacitus]

FWIW I see Zen are now offering "Digital Voice".  This is a bundle with 1,000-minutes monthly for mobiles or landlines.  £7/month although it's not clear if that's vat inclusive.  To be honest it looks a decent offer, although at present it appears limited to those on "full fibre" - presumably fibre to the home.

https://www.zen.co.uk/phone/digital-voice

If you migrate to Zen they offer a router which is one of the FritzBox range, most, if not all of which include a built in ATA.  Fritz 7590 UK version £174 @ Amazon, although I think Zen offer a 7530.  Worth noting Zen are an official AVM reseller, so the tech support *should* be pretty decent.  I doubt it would be in the iDNet league though given recent reports.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AVM-FRITZ-Box-7590-Version/dp/B085TQNWN4/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2HFD6KSSVDXIC&dchild=1&keywords=fritzbox+7590&qid=1632649458&sprefix=Frtizbox%2Caps%2C162&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExNllJVUROQzlYVUMmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTAwMDczODIyWVA5U1daMFdRS0haJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA1MDAwNzUxVktLREpKNFpPSEEmd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl

https://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/

[stan]

I've always had the impression that Zen were one of the better ones.  Trustpilot shows them in a pretty good light although, obviously enough, not without it's detractors.  But "ISP Review" has a number of people saying it's not as good as it used to be.

To be honest, I've said how my neighbour has been pleased  with his experience with Sky so far but they don't have perfect reviews - but with a company as big as that I guess they're not gonna please everyone.  I

I'd not seriously thought about leaving IDNet in the last 13 years - and for one main reason .... the ability to ring up and speak to someone straightaway if I have a query (and, over the years it's often been Brian wgho answers the phone). 

Having had experience with BT passing me round the globe and then returning me back to where I started, I'd be fearful of going with them.
I've got a severe aversion to TalkTalk which goes back a long way and Virgin Media are also on my list of organizations never to return to.

I'll sit tight and carry on carrying on and hope it all comes out in the wash.

[zappaDPJ]

Zen are currently offering some very attractive looking full fibre packages. If they are available to the new property when we move house I might be tempted.

[stan]

Regrettably I live in an area that doesn't allow full fibre and have seen no suggestion it's on its way.

I still only have ADSL so even FTTC would speed things up a bit.... but I'm not complaining about the present speed as it serves my purpose. But I would like to know that IDNet have plans to contact us domestic users to keep us informed.

[Tacitus]

At present I have BB+Phone with iDNet, but their VoIP offer is likely to put me off.  I'm not a heavy user so I could buy a Grandstream 801 ATA for some £40 outright, from a proper supplier and go to someone like Sipgate or Voipfone on a PAYG system which would probably suit me.

In fact I have a spare base station so I could probably give either a trial without affecting my landline number. 

None of this is likely to be urgent since the changeover is not supposed to be until 2025 and given real world scenarios it may not even be that soon.

[stan]

..........  " At present I have BB+Phone with iDNet, but their VoIP offer is likely to put me off. " ............

I'm not entirely sure I know exactly what VOIP packages the IDNet website is offering to residential customers.  I've never been able to go straight to the relevant bit and it takes me a while to find, what I believe is, the page that refers to domestic users.  Most seems to be aimed at business users.

I'm assuming IDNet don't have a published / advertised option whereby they supply an ATA such as that mentioned by "Tacitus" and would offer help or support getting it working? 

I guess I would need to upgrade to FTTC (which is available to me here) and isn't a problem ... but I haven't grasped the basic principles regarding whether or not I would still pay for the landline rental and call package that I presently have. And if I didn't have to have the aforementioned line rental arrangement, then how would I pay for any landline calls I make?  None of this is clear to me from reading the stuff on the website.

[Tacitus]

As mentioned upthread, I contacted iDNet and they are already doing domestic VoIP via Centrex home although they aren't advertising it at present.

The prices I was quoted are:

Ex-vat price for Centrex Home is £12.50pm on a 2yr contract including all UK call, single number port and either an IP desktop phone or IP-DECT or an ATA.  If you go for a desktop IP phone, it also needs a PSU at £14 and there is shipping of £10.

So you would have a choice of IP phone, IP-DECT base station, or an ATA (Grandstream or Cisco, no idea which).  Each of these would come ready configured for you to plug and play. 

In practice you can already do VoIP since you have a broadband connection.  The main thing is whether your ISP is prepared to offer it on other than Fibre to the home.

[stan]

Ta for the clarification above. 

Because I'm a bit thick I'm not entirely sure if the options above mean that my present phone package (line rental and inclusive calls, which cost £138.60 inc. VAT)  remain and the option for Centrex Home @£12.50 plus VAT is on top. Obviously I would need to pay more for FTTC to replace my present ADSL.

I wonder why this is not all spelled out for us on the website?  I would have thought people would like to know which model of VOIP phone or which ATA box would be supplied ..... just so we can have a look to see what we're getting.

[Tacitus]

Ta for the clarification above. 

Because I'm a bit thick I'm not entirely sure if the options above mean that my present phone package (line rental and inclusive calls, which cost £138.60 inc. VAT)  remain and the option for Centrex Home @£12.50 plus VAT is on top. Obviously I would need to pay more for FTTC to replace my present ADSL.

I wonder why this is not all spelled out for us on the website?  I would have thought people would like to know which model of VOIP phone or which ATA box would be supplied ..... just so we can have a look to see what we're getting.

Like I said they're not advertising it since there are currently problems with supply of ATAs. There may well be an element of waiting to see what others do.

In your case, you would get Broadband via a SOGEA line and then the Centrex/VoIP would be on top.  Your current line rental and calls would cease. 

By my calculations that would be (say):

40/10 SOGEA line @ £30 ex vat plus £12.50 ex vat for the VoIP phone and all calls/number port etc.   Add in the vat and you have £50.40pm  Faster broadband would cost  proportionately more. I'm currently paying £44.40pm for what amounts to the same, so there's a £6.00pm increase.   

Since I don't use the landline a great deal, it doesn't look very appealing and I'd rather pay more for a faster connection and move the VoIP to Sipgate/Voipfone/whoever on a PAYG basis.  No point in doing that at present since my line won't support any faster.   

The SOGEA prices were visible on the website, but they seem to have gone AWOL.....

[stan]

Mmmmm ....  Thanks for taking the time, Tacitus. Appreciated.

Gotta be honest £50.40 per month is not giving me warm and pleasing feelings at the moment.

If I look at what Sky offers it would seem it would cost me either £28 or £30 (depending on which of the two available options was chosen) inc. VAT with a router/hub included (the one that has the ATA built in). 

I just checked and the Sky VOIP provision is free with Superfast etc but you pay for any calls you make at 20p per minute (recently increased from 16 ppm). They call the package 'Free VOIP' or somesuch and don't make it especially clear about the 20p per minute bit without you digging deeper but it is called "Pay As You Go" so I guess the clue is in the name. Even so, given the limited use I currently make of the landline for calls, a saving of £20 a month on Broadband is not to be sneezed at and you could use the Sky VOIP service for incoming calls on your existing home phone/s and use your mobile for outgoing (especially seeing as many people now have an inclusive calls package).

The other way of approaching it is to ask if I really need a landline for landline calls?  Increasingly I think maybe not. It's just a convenience.

I believe I could keep my IDNet email address, which is a bonus, although I do also have a Hotmail email address which could be utilised if the need arose.

As I've said all along I wouldn't want to leave - and we've not reached that point yet - but seeing how satisfied my next door neighbour is with his Sky Broadband and VOIP phone it's something to think about.

[Tacitus]

Mmmmm ....  Thanks for taking the time, Tacitus. Appreciated.

No problem.

Gotta be honest £50.40 per month is not giving me warm and pleasing feelings at the moment.

TBH I think that once full fibre with its greater reliability becomes the norm, outfits like iDNet are going to be squeezed.  For corporates and SMEs that need the support and technical back-up with instant repsonse they will find a market.  Greater reliability of the connection means the home user will have less need of them and may well not be prepared to pay the extra.  I don't mind extra for peace of mind especially with VoIP, but there is a limit.

Like others I'm not really keen on splitting the package and having one supplier for VoIP and another for broadband.  Voipfone got hit with a major DDOS attack which kept them more or less out of action for a couple of days.  They recovered but they seem to have been a bit short on protection from such attacks.  No doubt that has been remedied but there's a lot of cowboys around....

[stan]

^^^^^   All noted with interest.

I was quick to point out that, on the face of it, Sky Broadband with their VOIP phone facility  ( It's actually called Sky Talk - Pay As You Go and also goes under the nomenclature Internet Calls  )  .....  is considerably cheaper than what we're asked to pay for VOIP service at IDNet, but it's also only fair to point out that if you look on the Sky Community forum thingy there are twenty pages of instances where people are saying "my landline doesn't work" and there are volunteer assistants on the forum to point the users to this or that remedy or to escalate the complaint to Sky themselves who, apparently, intervene to assist.

I would imagine Sky have an infinitely higher number of customers compared to IDNet hence there's gonna be more complaints aired in public but I feel quite confident in hoping that if IDNet customers had a problem with their VOIP service failing then IDNet technicians would go out of their way to rectify ASAP and I suppose if we were looking for some sort of justification to remain where we were - and pay the extra - then that would give us reason to remain.

[sn]

iDNET simply bolting on a Centrex VOIP package might explain some of the price difference as there will be two profit margins built into their price.