Between now and 2027, all telephone providers will be moving their customers over to new, upgraded landline services that use broadband to make and receive calls.
For BT, its digital landline product is called Digital Voice, but other phone companies have their own versions.
An industry-wide shift from analogue to digital will see BT and many other home phone operators in the UK provide services over a broadband connection, similar to work taking place in other countries around the world. As a charity that supports elderly and disabled people, AbilityNet is working closely with BT to help raise awareness of the switchover and to share helpful, up-to-date information on what this means for you or for your family and friends, particularly those with additional needs.
To further raise awareness of the switch, BT has launched a new initiative called ‘Connected Together,’ aimed at friends and family members of those with additional needs, such as elderly relatives. With ‘Connected Together’, alongside BT’s direct customer communications, BT is encouraging friends and family members of those with additional needs to take a few simple steps to help support their loved ones during the switch to a digital landline, such as helping explain what they need to do in preparation for switching and why it is important.
BT is providing dedicated information and resources to support friends and family members – together with those with additional needs – via a dedicated website. Here are just a few helpful tips:
- Inform and educate: Ensure your family understands the switch to Digital Voice, why it is happening, and how to prepare. They will receive at least four weeks’ notice.
- It is easy – and comes with added benefits, too: Switching is simple – just connect your home phone to your router instead of the socket on your wall. Follow BT Group’s step-by-step guidance [PDF] or request expert assistance, if required. Pricing and plans remain unchanged, with added benefits like spam call blocking.
- Notify BT Group of their circumstances: If your loved one uses a telecare device, pendant alarm, or burglar alarm, please let the phone company know and check with the equipment provider to see whether it needs to be upgraded ahead of the switch.
Click here to learn more about BT Connected Together:
Additionly, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as BT, Zen Internet, iD Net, A&A, etc. provide battery backup for the digital phone line that connects into the router in case of a power interruption or outage/power cut. This is crucial due to the fact that as soon as a vulnerable user loses their internet connection (which most people colloquially refer to as ‘WiFi’), the new digital phone line can go down with it. The old copper phone line used to work even in the event of a power cut, regardless if the internet connection was not working because the copper phone line was fed by backup battery power from BT’s old telephone exchanges.
Now BT and the rest of the Internet Service Providers have shifted this responsibility onto vulnerable users and within the perimeter of their home due to the way this new Digital Voice technology is implemented on a technical level. The fibre strands that bring internet into our homes cannot carry physical current like the old copper phone lines.
Please click here to read the Governments response to this tramsaction: