Maybe I'm being dense, but can anyone explain to me what BT will do, physically around my house, when the changeover from analogue to digital phones "by 2025"? The BT website is too vague and hyped to make anything clear, but from the Telecoms World website for example :-
Yes, I get it that everyone (I mean everyone who still needs a landline service) will need a router for VOIP; I already have one but I guess it may need changing. I also get it that fibre is faster than copper, athough its reliabilty will be no better than my present copper unless they re-route it away from the trees that keep breaking the lines, or put it underground (I wish).
However, sorry, I cannot see that copper is going to be replaced by fibre everywhere by 2025. I live in rural Wales and in my county alone there must be thousands of miles of overhead copper line on tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of poles, a significant portion of them decrepit and with trees grown around them. The Open Reach guys are always repairing lines around here, and often need chainsaws on the surrounding greenery just to get their ladders up the poles. My line along the road (there are four poles just for me) has needed repairing several times and each is a significant project that takes about a week, with temporary traffic lights, tree surgeon contractors, cherry-pickers, typically 4-6 vehicles and ten men : that is just for a short circuit in the cable.
Yet with just over a year to go "by 2025" there is no sign of any work up poles or of trenching for underground cables. The latter would need wayleaves and no other property owners I know around here have seen any applications for them. So does anyone know what will really happen?
It seems to me that in much of the available information several things are being confused and conflated : Fibre-versus-Copper, Analog-versus-Digital, and Voice-versus-Data.By the year 2025, BT Openreach plan to shut down the ageing Copper Wire Telephone Network and replace it with a Fibre Optic Broadband Network.
.... Fibre Connectivity transmits data quicker, has fewer reliability issues
..... The rollout of Fibre Optic Broadband has taken longer than anticipated, but BT Openreach has announced that Copper will be phased out altogether by 2025.
Yes, I get it that everyone (I mean everyone who still needs a landline service) will need a router for VOIP; I already have one but I guess it may need changing. I also get it that fibre is faster than copper, athough its reliabilty will be no better than my present copper unless they re-route it away from the trees that keep breaking the lines, or put it underground (I wish).
However, sorry, I cannot see that copper is going to be replaced by fibre everywhere by 2025. I live in rural Wales and in my county alone there must be thousands of miles of overhead copper line on tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of poles, a significant portion of them decrepit and with trees grown around them. The Open Reach guys are always repairing lines around here, and often need chainsaws on the surrounding greenery just to get their ladders up the poles. My line along the road (there are four poles just for me) has needed repairing several times and each is a significant project that takes about a week, with temporary traffic lights, tree surgeon contractors, cherry-pickers, typically 4-6 vehicles and ten men : that is just for a short circuit in the cable.
Yet with just over a year to go "by 2025" there is no sign of any work up poles or of trenching for underground cables. The latter would need wayleaves and no other property owners I know around here have seen any applications for them. So does anyone know what will really happen?