topic Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines in Everything else

Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Ratchete — Wed, 08 May 2024 09:42:53 GMT

I'm currently on an 18mth contract for broadband and line rental which expires 22nd Oct 2025. I use the plusnet broadband for emails and light browsing; the speed is truely awful so not any use for anything else (long copper wire to a fibre enabled exchange). What is important is my landline number which is used for contacting elderly relatives, for them to contact me and for business calls ie I wish to retain that number. I also have fixed wireless broadband from another company which is fully utilised by other members of the family for gaming/streaming.

What I really would like is FTTP and to retain my landline number. I also like having options and not having to rely on solely one provider for everything. This applies to many aspects of my life, we have 2 cars (surely both won't be broken down at the same time); we have a variety of ways of heating/lighting our home (coal/wood/electricity/solar panels/generator), our own water supply.

I've attached a snapshot of the BT Broadband Availability Checker but I don't really understand what it's telling me.

What I want to know is what are Plusnet's plans/procedures to manage the end of copper lines. I'm struggling to find any information from them re this matter. There's been a few indicative posts in the forum that have helped my general understanding of the situation but not really specific enough. If this means limping on with Plusnet forever, well I suppose that's what'll happen. The FAQ's of Simple Telecoms is far more helpful than those of Plusnet.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

HPsauce — Wed, 08 May 2024 10:12:44 GMT

@Ratchete has raised a very important point that I've been pondering for some time and potentially awaiting the time to comment.

I think their post raises the issue very well. PlusNet seem to have a "head in the sand" attitude to what is going on, and that includes the way they are ceasing all their other "add-ons" too. They really do need to have some VERY PROMINENT guidance for both new and existing customers. There are a lot of complex issues that affect people in different ways.

Instead they seem to be largely relying on the goodwill of an assortment of customers on these forums to explain to those who ask what is going on and what their options are. It's just not good enough! 😠

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

bmc — Wed, 08 May 2024 10:51:35 GMT

@Ratchete

Copper lines themselves are not coming to an end - just the phone service.

PN appear to have no policy regarding the end of the PSTN service, other than not offering a phone service to new customers. For existing cutomers on FTTC they are not being offering a continuation of their phone service when recontracting unless they phone in. This is presumably to reduce numbers when the time comes to pull the plug.

For FTTC lines internet will continue to be provided over he copper line from the cabinet to the premise using an OR product called SOGEA. There is an equivilant product for ADSL (SOADSL) lines which I'm not familiar with. It's more complicated as the line runs from the Exchange and not a FTTC cabinet though according to the Checker results it is available for your line..

The image you posted basically shows no better speeds available. However, given your speeds you may be eligible for the OpenReach USO obligation of a minimum 10 Mbps down. I have no information on this.

You could look at www.openreach.com and check for any full fibre plans.

For an on going phone service you'll need to use as VOIP provider - you already appear to have power backup. Thre are many providers out there but A&A get good reviews on this Forum.

https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/voip-information/

Finally, you could phone the PlusNet Customer Options Team on 0800 013 2632 to have a chat about what may or may not be available. If you do, ask about the Universal Service Obligation.

Brian

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Baldrick1 — Wed, 08 May 2024 12:22:46 GMT

@Ratchete

I have no more information than you, but based on what happened with the mobile phone service, assume that when the crunch comes there will be two official options:

1. If you want to keep your phone then transfer the combined Internet access and phone service to BT/EE..

2. Take an Internet only service from Plusnet and either lose the landline phone number or transfer it yourself to a third party VoIP company.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Ratchete — Wed, 08 May 2024 15:34:39 GMT

Brian,

Unfortunately the USO is a very bad joke. You have to be very persistent to even get BT to consider your request, they try and fob you off by trying to persuade you that as there is 4G/Satellite available they don't want to offer a USO quote. I didn't really want to go back to BT in any case given what a shower they are. However a neighbour in a next door postcode but similarly situated to us did get a quote of circa £140,000. Turns out you have a right to ask for fibre under the USO but they don't have to provide it at reasonable cost, they are obliged to cover costs up to a certain amount, from memory it was about £3,500 so if the cost of fibre installation was going to be £4,500 you'd have to pay £1,000. There was a community initiative to try and get fibre to the nearby village but the village is the meeting place of 3 different area codes and in order to have enough premises to make it viable a lot of people would have had to sign up, I think there was mention of there having to be a new exchange. The initiative went nowhere. BT were spectacularly unhelpful all along.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Ratchete — Wed, 08 May 2024 16:15:21 GMT

I realise that I have plenty of time to make decisions/plans, but not knowing what Plusnet it up to is making it harder/stressful. I'd only signed up to them for another 18 months because there weren't any other alternatives. If I'd stayed with Plusnet out of contract, I would have been fleeced.

We moved to this farm in 2009 and had a new phone line put in by BT for free; there was a special offer on. The had to run a couple of miles of copper wire, rather more than they were expecting because the bundle of wires had reached capacity. My grandfather-in-law who died in 1976 had lived there and was one of the 1st people in the area to have a phone albeit a shared line with a neighbour. After he died the phone was disconnected and the number recycled. But this got me thinking what would be the position be if we'd moved in this year? Would anybody have been willing or able to re-instate the phone/broadband line, copper or fibre? It wasn't that easy to get fixed wireless, we had to fell quite a few trees, fortunately some were blown over by various storms but there is still annual pruning along the sight lines. We did get a grant otherwise we couldn't have afforded it. Whilst I could have worked away with satellite (but not a fan) or 3G/4G, there is a gamer/streamer in the family and neither of those options were good enough; EE and Starlink were tried and discarded. I tried signing up to a voip service a while ago but didn't follow through when I couldn't get a number that I wanted; there was no mention of porting my old landline number.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

bmc — Wed, 08 May 2024 16:53:15 GMT

@Ratchete

Given that SOADSL appears to be available you can move at a time that suits you. PN will happily change your line but probably at the cost of a new contract.

As I understand it you only need about 0.5Mbps for a VOIP line but, given your likely speeds at the best of times it would probably mean no internet work during phone calls.

Somewhere deep in the back of my mind is a thought that you could sign up for a new, voice only account (second line) but not with PN. If allowed this would be your phone and leave the current line for internet only. Others may know more than me.

Brian

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Baldrick1 — Wed, 08 May 2024 17:22:59 GMT

@Ratchete wrote:

EE and Starlink were tried and discarded.

I can understand that Starlink is expensive, but why EE? Did you try using a MiFi unit with a high gain external antenna?

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

jwsg — Wed, 08 May 2024 20:21:03 GMT

Right now the switch to digital voice might seem to be something only to worry about in the (not too distant) future and for now just a source of confusion - e.g. "end of copper lines" rather than changing from analogue to digital over copper or fibre.

But when it does finally happen and if PN stick to a policy of no "landline" unless you switch to EE/BT there's going to be some 1m fairly annoyed customers - the reason we're PN customers is about cost not a willingness to lose a basic service they could easily provide.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

jab1 — Wed, 08 May 2024 20:35:33 GMT

@jwsg wrote:

But when it does finally happen and if PN stick to a policy of no "landline" unless you switch to EE/BT there's going to be some 1m fairly annoyed customers - the reason we're PN customers is about cost not a willingness to lose a basic service they could easily provide.

I keep saying this: PN are now merely the cheap, basic brand of BT Consumer Division, nothing more/nothing less, and BT Consumer Division decide what they will, or won't provide under that brand.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

MisterW — Thu, 09 May 2024 06:51:32 GMT

There is some merit in what John says but there are other considerations

a basic service they could easily provide.

Its not easy to provide a voip service, you need infrastructure and support. Plusnet has always provided the phone service using the BTw/Openreach WLR (wholesale line rental) service. As such they have little involvement in the provision of the service other than processing call & charging information from OR. In terms of support they use Openreach testing facilities and arrange Openreach engineers to fix faults.

Now BTw/Openreach have decided that they will not provide a similar Digital voice service in the future and that, if they wish to, then ISPs must provide their own infrastructure and support to provide such a service. Some ISPs have decided to so do, others have not.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

jab1 — Thu, 09 May 2024 07:02:11 GMT

Thanks, @MisterW , but is it not a fact that Plusnet is merely a BTCD 'brand', with all the decisions as to what they provide emanating from that Division?

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

MisterW — Thu, 09 May 2024 07:06:42 GMT

@jab1 as I said there's merit in what you say, but noone outside of the organisations really knows what and how such decisions are made. Such things are commercially sensitive.

I'm looking at the voip issue from a technical / support aspect and pointing out that its not as simple as people believe.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

jab1 — Thu, 09 May 2024 07:18:11 GMT

Obviously they are 'commercially sensitive', but it is possible to do a little deduction, based on known facts. I don't want to get into an argument over this - just had a very enjoyable holiday 😀 - so I will just beg to differ.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Dan_the_Van — Thu, 09 May 2024 08:08:31 GMT

When I joined Free-Online back in 2003 included on my package I had a VoIP product. Can not recall the year (been a few) plusnet discontinued the service and transferred the VoIP customer base if I recall correctly to Vonage.

I gave using VoIP at that time as it didn't seem to work very well on a slow ADSL connection.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

RobPN — Thu, 09 May 2024 10:48:29 GMT

@Dan_the_Van wrote:

When I joined Free-Online back in 2003 included on my package I had a VoIP product. Can not recall the year (been a few) plusnet discontinued the service and transferred the VoIP customer base if I recall correctly to Vonage.

I gave using VoIP at that time as it didn't seem to work very well on a slow ADSL connection.

I can't remember whether PN initially had a VoIP service when I joined in 2002 on, ISTR, 500Kbps ADSL, but I started using VoIP seriously around 2005-2006 and that's about the time I started using 'PlusTalk' (I think it was called). ISTR I also upgraded to MaxDSL around that time, and using a DrayTek Vigor 2800Vg VoIP router the service always worked well for me, other than a few hiccups initially whereby my monthly minutes allowance didn't renew correctly and required manual correction for a couple of months. Those PN inclusive minutes were a great help in avoiding BT telephone charges and I've been using multiple VoIP accounts ever since.

ICBW but after some time the VoIP service was sub-contracted to Gradwell Communications, and was eventually taken over by them on a 'separate paid for basis' when PN ceased providing it as an inclusive service on certain account types.

Edit; typo

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Dan_the_Van — Fri, 10 May 2024 06:51:31 GMT

@RobPN

It's probably clear to you my memory of events has faded a bit, so thank you for taking the time to fill in the gaps; my journey with Free-Online is much the same as yours I starting with dialup modem, I moved to 500Kbps ADSL at some point.

The maximum speed I achieved with ADSL was 2Mbps, long line with copper and aluminium cable, VoIP didn't work for me very well.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Ratchete — Wed, 15 May 2024 13:12:36 GMT

I agree with you whole heartedly. Some clarity would be very much appreciated. Thanks for all the replies on this thread, even those that were a little over my head. I think that once I'm out of contract with PN at the end of next year I'll be looking for the cheapest possible broadband (landline based) that I can get; just hoping that there'll be a choice; I may even do away with the land line altogether. In any case I will port my landline number to a Voip provider; who that will be I don't know but A&A as suggested in one of the replies has good reviews.

Re: Is there an official Plusnet specific guide to the end of copper lines

Ratchete — Wed, 15 May 2024 13:40:23 GMT

Starlink was expensive and the ping was awful (huge & variable). It started off great but soon went downhill. At the time EE was also expensive and unreliable even with one of those stick to the glass window antenna. It was my gamer child that organised it & it wasn't good enough so they then went for Starlink which also didn't work out so they are now using our fixed wireless which isn't the quickest but it's stable, has low ping and is therefore usable.

An aside re ee: we have just had a bad experience with ee. We had cheap very basic legacy contract with Tesco (O2) for our mobiles which were adequate for our needs although we had actually been out of contract for years with no price increase. In April, Tesco told us that the price would go up annually by a percentage + r/cpi. Well that was a rip off for the miniscule amount of call/data/texts on the packages. So we decides to move to SPUSU (ee) for £2.90pm each, much less than we'd been paying for a better package. It was a complete and utter disaster; reception outdoors was poor to non existent and indoors it was worse. If you did actually connect a call both parties sounded like drunk Daleks with a speech impediment and were unintelligible. So less than 48hrs after signing up with SPUSU we were back with O2 via GiffGaff and normal good service was restored. It is costing us £6 each a month but this is still slightly less than Tesco for a much better package; more than we'll ever use. EE isn't great here, operating on higher frequencies (worse penetration of walls/trees), plus the loss of 3G which is more stable than 4G doesn't help. Being remotley rural has it's downsides as well as it's plus sides.