An interesting component of the switching off of POTS is that the quality of service requirements are different. POTS is regulated to require the phone company to maintain a certain legal quality of service with negative consequences for failing to do so.
Meanwhile, cell phone and VOIP services are "best effort."
The phone company put a pretty huge amount of effort into maintaining QoS (Lily Tomlin jokes aside) because there were consequences for not doing so. It makes sense that they would prefer to shed that responsibility.
In some places in Europe, the home internet ADSL technology on the copper wires, the same as used for PSTN phones, delivers higher speed (realistically an order of a few Mbps, stable) compared to congested LTE/4G mobile networks (typical 1-3 Mbps). The mobile network providers don't guarantee minumim speeds in the contracts, and customers (typically older people) that move from ADSL to LTE/4G, are left with a degraded service without a possibility to object.
“Best efforts” is a legal term. Its definition can vary from state to state, but it is not just, “oh we tried, sorry, lol” and it defines the highest standard of implementation in all jurisdictions.
The biggest problems is power. The phone company power the POTS line — you can even make an emergency call from an abandoned building with no electrical service (and no phone subscription) if you find a jack and plug in. Under those huge central office buildings are huge banks of -48 V batteries which are required to provide a week of power (or was it two in the US? I can’t remember).
Now you’ll have a router with a battery that the owner doesn’t know about and won’t service, so that within a year or so it won’t work. In an emergency: no phone service.
This assumes that anyone has maintained the 48V infrastructure, which doesn’t seem like something that will be feasible considering the insignificant quantity of customers using true copper landline service.
The other problem with customers preferring not to have landlines is that by the time they need them, it’s too late to convince them to buy a traditional telephone and plug it in. You are likely to be nursing home age if you still prefer having a landline. You can have amazing infrastructure but if nobody uses it, it’s useless.
What we really have now is cellular sites with their own infrastructure aiming to keep them operational during power outages.
Then we’ve also got various satellite services that are growing in capabilities day by day, and are built in to common devices like iPhones as an SOS method.
I’m not in the UK but my house was built relatively recently and it doesn’t have any telephone jacks. The theoretical benefits of a landline are entirely theoretical. The ship has thoroughly sailed.
You put the battery in the RC and have a battery maintenance schedule. They do that today: the CO battery is just for phones within a few miles of the CO, so rural setups use distributed batteries. Ppl forget how much of California is quite remote and (to my pleasure) without mobile coverage.
I have copper service (buried) for the alarm system in my house in Palo Alto, powered by the CO. I will be sorry to lose it.
The cell ppl so have batteries in the bis and ter nodes but not long term power like the phone company has to do.
Satellite bandwidth is quite limited and uses a lot of power. It’s not really a solution, especially with consumer terminals. It’s just a handwave to get away with not dealing with the problems.
Overall this is a step backwards on safety. Telecoms MAHA
My amateur radio friends used to sound paranoid when they talked about how it might be the last form of communication in an emergency. After all, I'd seen how overbuilt and reliable the PSTN was.
How many people still have a corded phone, and how many of those would remember that those phones still work when there's no power?
It's much more important to ensure that the cell network is resilient. Backup power, mobile towers that can be deployed to disaster areas, and continuing the rollout of satellite connectivity will help far more people than maintaining landline infrastructure.
> Now you’ll have a router with a battery that the owner doesn’t know about and won’t service
In Canada, Bell has actually discontinued battery backup in their latest modems, supposedly because they were having trouble with modems not rebooting correctly.
There's some sense in which I prefer this, though, because at least I know how to source D batteries and they're a commonly available standard and I know exactly what their shelf life is. I might even have spares around in my emergency kit for things like lanterns and radios. I've also seen Verizon battery backup units that run on small lead-acid batteries which seem to need frequent replacing, and require me to look up the details and order from a specialty vendor every time... more annoying to keep extras of those on hand and tough luck if it reaches end of life shortly before or during an emergency.
> Verizon battery backup units that run on small lead-acid batteries which seem to need frequent replacing, and require me to look up the details and order from a specialty vendor every time..
Have you? All of them I've encountered take a very standard 12V lead-acid battery - the same one that's inside consumer UPS units - and you can get replacements from a dozen brands on Amazon and other vendors.
I probably have to replace them every 2-3 years, though I imagine alkaline D-Cells would be far worse.
In my experience, the bigger issue with Verizon's battery backups was that when the battery starts failing, the device beeps loudly every minute. That's especially problematic in apartments, as it tends to be within earshot of the bedroom. And the battery backup system is present in the ONT box even if you don't have phone service, or ever want it; and even if you own your home, it takes a lot of complaining to get Verizon to remove it. Horrendously stupid design.
I think a solution to this is mandate providers provide a cellular interface for households for emergency response, with battery backup. Basically a mobile hotspot with a phone jack, speaker, microphone, and red button to call for help attached to a chonky batter pack. Device inventory and health is required to be reported to regulators.
This solves for power, and reporting means it’s trivial to log and audit if the devices are online and available for emergency service calls.
If a mobile tower isn’t available in the area, a tower must be made available for the sector coverage.
Anything else in a world of fiber to the home is compliance theater, as your example shows.
You wont have a battery. In the UK they stopped providing a battery backup when they switched to the newer ONT quite a while ago, and routers typically do not include one either.
There are a few generic router battery backup products on the market but none specifically get advertised as working on the ONT, but many do. Realistically though they're utterly pointless when you can pick up a vastly superior APC UPS for the same price.
My plan is to stick my UniFi gateway / switch on a UPS, and get one of those power over Ethernet injectors / barrel jack extractors(?) to power the OR ONT.
Chatting to the BT guy that last visited, they reckoned the street cab would only last for half a day or so without power.
Somewhat rural here (well 1/4 mile from an A road). We were supposed to be switched to digital several times, been sent a pile of hubs and extender devices and have had several letters about the switchover date. Latest one was we are apparently "switched over" a month ago, except that it actually turns out to be SOTAP [1] and everything works exactly as before (including CLI, using the old 300 baud standard). I assume they couldn't get digital to us so they've installed kit at the exchange just so we are "switched over".
Fairly obviously, the SOTAP kit continues to provide power from the local exchange so even in the (relatively common) power cuts here the phones continue to work (we're not on any kind of priority register or anything like that, I assume it's just BT are dealing with peopole living out in the sticks).
N.B. we also have a 2nd line, on a business account (WFH) - that one is full digital, 70mbps VDSL and has cisco/yealink ATAs for phone service. So two lines, a home line that's SOTAP and a work line that's broadband/digital voice.
Replacing simple dedicated circuits with "best effort" highly complex packet-switched networks? I bet it's a great money-maker for those involved in the work, but a huge step backwards for reliability.
The move is part of a wider government scheme to get the UK onto all-digital high-speed networks running on fiber-optic infrastructure, and the legacy phone service – with its dependency on copper cabling – was standing in the way.
Not surprising that the government is involved; using new technology for new installations is acceptable, but cutting off existing paying customers with service that may have been working just fine for many decades is hostile.
I'm not in the UK, but my house has had a working landline since I bought it many decades ago, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon.
That's not part of the phone system I want cut off. I want the part that allows international calls that come from the same few buildings in a small space that are responsible for half a trillion per year scams.
> … public awareness seems low that analog phone services will soon be disconnected.
What’s the level of public awareness that they’re even using the landline service? My 98yo grandmother has had the “same” phone service (with the same phone number) for decades. She’s completely unaware of the infrastructure it runs on.
I happen to know that her area was converted to all fiber digital years ago, but she wouldn’t know that. Her children (my parents’ generation) are also clueless about the infrastructure itself.
So how many people know they’ll be affected even if they have been informed of the change?
> need to coordinate a much more cohesive campaign that reaches customers directly
I think this is the crux. You should definitely mail everyone affected.
Send a letter 2 years before. 1 year before. 1 month before. Do a scream test at termination date (switch off for a day and see who pipes up), keep operating for two weeks and that's it.
Some people will never switch as long as "it works", but that's not your problem. Some letters, a website that the young generation can easily share (a daughter visits and a son takes care of IT, not uncommon.)
Never seen that word ever in my life. Bizarre to use such a ridiculously unknown word for such an important story. I was thinking where the fuck is britland? Must be somewhere in Scandinavia or Germany.
I mean, boffin: fine. Everyone in the UK knows what that means. But britland isn't a term that anyone in the UK has heard of. (Testing...)
*land is a common enough suffix in the UK though; I often say things like 'I'm not sure how it's done in Microsoft land' or 'the fallout of my trip to bodge land'. 'Britland' is a fairly transparent construction along these lines.
But the point is that I'm not going to read the article unless I know it's interesting or relevant. I assume Britland was some island or area. It sounds like a real name of an area. The only reason I clicked was because I wanted to find out where it was. I googled it and nothing came up, so I thought "I bet it just some fucked up register headline", and I was correct.
[Tip] If you decide to cut the cord but want to keep your number you can port it to Andrews & Arnold (a small ISP, based in Bracknell) as a £1.80 per month VOIP subscription.
Long-wave and Radio Teleswitch just shut down in the spring. After medium wave shut downs in 2024. Different topic but lots of communication changes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch
> The company previously told The Register that customers without a fiber connection will likely be switched to SOTAP for Analog (Single Order Transitional Access Product), where equipment is installed in the local telephone exchange to allow them to continue to use their old phone line as before.
What does Single Order refer to? One purchase order at a time?
We're on SOTAP - nothing changes, except you have to dial the area code for local numbers. Analogue phones, CLI etc are unaffected. Basically it's an exchange end change, they put the kit needed to use analogue phones at the exchange instead of inside your residence.
Can you get SOTAP and VDSL (FFTC) on the same line?
My (pensioner) mother lives in a very rural area and Andrews and Arnolds is "her" ISP (which I pay for). The main issue is that a) no mobile network works indoors; and b) uptime is crap -- there were two months of 70% uptime in the last year and during both of them PSTN worked brilliantly when DSL didn't.
The main thing I'm worried about is 999 calls. She doesn't have mobile reception and PSTN is far, far more robust. She does get a lot of power cuts but that's not as common as degradation to the 10 km line from the "cabinet" by livestock or trees...
Meanwhile, cell phone and VOIP services are "best effort."
The phone company put a pretty huge amount of effort into maintaining QoS (Lily Tomlin jokes aside) because there were consequences for not doing so. It makes sense that they would prefer to shed that responsibility.
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/internet-and-p...
Now you’ll have a router with a battery that the owner doesn’t know about and won’t service, so that within a year or so it won’t work. In an emergency: no phone service.
The other problem with customers preferring not to have landlines is that by the time they need them, it’s too late to convince them to buy a traditional telephone and plug it in. You are likely to be nursing home age if you still prefer having a landline. You can have amazing infrastructure but if nobody uses it, it’s useless.
What we really have now is cellular sites with their own infrastructure aiming to keep them operational during power outages.
Then we’ve also got various satellite services that are growing in capabilities day by day, and are built in to common devices like iPhones as an SOS method.
I’m not in the UK but my house was built relatively recently and it doesn’t have any telephone jacks. The theoretical benefits of a landline are entirely theoretical. The ship has thoroughly sailed.
I have copper service (buried) for the alarm system in my house in Palo Alto, powered by the CO. I will be sorry to lose it.
The cell ppl so have batteries in the bis and ter nodes but not long term power like the phone company has to do.
Satellite bandwidth is quite limited and uses a lot of power. It’s not really a solution, especially with consumer terminals. It’s just a handwave to get away with not dealing with the problems.
Overall this is a step backwards on safety. Telecoms MAHA
Now I wonder if maybe it's time to get licensed.
I agree though that getting licensed might be useful for knowing how to use it.
The premise is she needs something as reliable as a landline, because during California wildfires the cell towers and power go down.
Maybe someone should have whispered to her that this product uses the same cell towers, or equally-vulnerable broadband. I could not stop laughing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud2LaFDEUho
It's much more important to ensure that the cell network is resilient. Backup power, mobile towers that can be deployed to disaster areas, and continuing the rollout of satellite connectivity will help far more people than maintaining landline infrastructure.
In Canada, Bell has actually discontinued battery backup in their latest modems, supposedly because they were having trouble with modems not rebooting correctly.
https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/battery-backup/p...
What a fuckin' joke.
Have you? All of them I've encountered take a very standard 12V lead-acid battery - the same one that's inside consumer UPS units - and you can get replacements from a dozen brands on Amazon and other vendors.
I probably have to replace them every 2-3 years, though I imagine alkaline D-Cells would be far worse.
This solves for power, and reporting means it’s trivial to log and audit if the devices are online and available for emergency service calls.
If a mobile tower isn’t available in the area, a tower must be made available for the sector coverage.
Anything else in a world of fiber to the home is compliance theater, as your example shows.
There are a few generic router battery backup products on the market but none specifically get advertised as working on the ONT, but many do. Realistically though they're utterly pointless when you can pick up a vastly superior APC UPS for the same price.
Chatting to the BT guy that last visited, they reckoned the street cab would only last for half a day or so without power.
Fairly obviously, the SOTAP kit continues to provide power from the local exchange so even in the (relatively common) power cuts here the phones continue to work (we're not on any kind of priority register or anything like that, I assume it's just BT are dealing with peopole living out in the sticks).
N.B. we also have a 2nd line, on a business account (WFH) - that one is full digital, 70mbps VDSL and has cisco/yealink ATAs for phone service. So two lines, a home line that's SOTAP and a work line that's broadband/digital voice.
[1] https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/09/openreach-laun...
The move is part of a wider government scheme to get the UK onto all-digital high-speed networks running on fiber-optic infrastructure, and the legacy phone service – with its dependency on copper cabling – was standing in the way.
Not surprising that the government is involved; using new technology for new installations is acceptable, but cutting off existing paying customers with service that may have been working just fine for many decades is hostile.
I'm not in the UK, but my house has had a working landline since I bought it many decades ago, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon.
Best of luck contacting your provider
So all of it.
oh it is el Reg, cheeky bastards
California's also been fighting this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/att-loses-key-ru...
What’s the level of public awareness that they’re even using the landline service? My 98yo grandmother has had the “same” phone service (with the same phone number) for decades. She’s completely unaware of the infrastructure it runs on.
I happen to know that her area was converted to all fiber digital years ago, but she wouldn’t know that. Her children (my parents’ generation) are also clueless about the infrastructure itself.
So how many people know they’ll be affected even if they have been informed of the change?
I think this is the crux. You should definitely mail everyone affected.
Send a letter 2 years before. 1 year before. 1 month before. Do a scream test at termination date (switch off for a day and see who pipes up), keep operating for two weeks and that's it.
Some people will never switch as long as "it works", but that's not your problem. Some letters, a website that the young generation can easily share (a daughter visits and a son takes care of IT, not uncommon.)
I mean, boffin: fine. Everyone in the UK knows what that means. But britland isn't a term that anyone in the UK has heard of. (Testing...)
So pretty much anyone for whom the news is relevant would understand the headline immediately.
It sounds like it was a successful title. Click obtained.
Long-wave and Radio Teleswitch just shut down in the spring. After medium wave shut downs in 2024. Different topic but lots of communication changes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch
What does Single Order refer to? One purchase order at a time?
My (pensioner) mother lives in a very rural area and Andrews and Arnolds is "her" ISP (which I pay for). The main issue is that a) no mobile network works indoors; and b) uptime is crap -- there were two months of 70% uptime in the last year and during both of them PSTN worked brilliantly when DSL didn't.
The main thing I'm worried about is 999 calls. She doesn't have mobile reception and PSTN is far, far more robust. She does get a lot of power cuts but that's not as common as degradation to the 10 km line from the "cabinet" by livestock or trees...