@stathe
I’ve probably spent about two days of my life trying to help you over the last few years, researching the options available at your address, and posting solutions on this forum, but you have done nothing to help yourself. You need to act soon otherwise you will lose your phone, broadband and email within six months.
So for one last time I’m going to layout your situation, explain what will happen if you don’t act in the next few months, and propose solutions to your three issues.
First, here are the FACTS that we are working with -
BROADBAND
Your existing Plusnet broadband and telephone are delivered via an ADSL copper landline.
Your ADSL broadband is now so slow that it is unusable and is not going to get any better. It is unlikely that Openreach can improve your line as the telephone exchange spare parts are obsolete and unavailable, and they don’t have much incentive doing repairs as they are planning to decommission ADSL in exchanges by 2030.
BT Openreach are retiring all UK landline telephones by the end of January 2027.
When your telephone service is switched off, you will lose your Plusnet broadband because an ADSL connection without the phone becomes a product called SOADSL which Plusnet and most other ISPs don’t support, and those few ISPs that do are very expensive.
At your address, no other wired Openreach broadband alternatives exists or planned within the next 12 months. Openreach don’t have FTTC/SOGEA (fibre to a street cabinet) in your area. Openreach have started the initial phases of installing FTTP (full fibre) in your exchange area – but they are not going to get to your address within twelve months.
During your recent Openreach phone repair, the engineer confirmed that no broadband upgrades are happening in the near future.
When you have no Openreach broadband options available, you will have to leave Plusnet.
Checking for alternative broadband providers, there are no “AltNet” full fibre providers in your postcode, there are a few “fixed wireless” broadband providers in adjacent villages but their wireless coverage doesn’t extend to where you are.
Mobile data coverage on 5G is non-existent, as is 4G indoor data with any of the mobile providers. There is a chance that with an external 4G directional aerial that you might be able to get an acceptable broadband connection on the “Three” mobile network.
That only leaves satellite broadband, of which Starlink is the obvious solution.
TELEPHONE
Your current analogue telephone is plugged into a BT telephone socket.
If you want to continue to have a home phone after the imminent shutdown of the phone landline service, you will need to transfer your telephone number to a digital telephone service provider.
Digital telephones in the UK are either “VoIP” (Voice over Internet Protocol), or “Digital Voice” which is similar to VoIP but usually less flexible and often more expensive.
Digital telephones are connected via your internet service, either using a new VoIP handset, or using your existing handset via an ATA adaptor to convert the BT plug to an ethernet connection which is plugged in to a spare socket on your broadband router.
One of the many problems you have, is that VoIP needs a relatively good broadband connection to work, but with your sub 1Mbps ADSL connection, you have almost no hope of having a reliably working telephone service until you change your broadband.
EMAIL
Plusnet are in the process of relieving themselves of responsibility for maintaining their email service, by offloading it to Greenby (covered in many topics on this forum).
If your telephone service is removed, or your Plusnet broadband ends, before your email address is migrated to Greenby, then you will lose your Plusnet email service.
ADVICE - BROADBAND
You keep posting messages along the lines of -
“I want to stay with Plusnet, and will hang on until they migrate me to a better service”.
It is NEVER going to happen - because they CAN’T !
Plusnet can only provide whatever Openreach has available at your address.
It is Openreach that are retiring the telephone service in six months.
It is Openreach that don’t have other broadband options in your area.
Plusnet don’t use any providers other than Openreach.
There are misleading posts on this forum that suggest that you should ask Plusnet to migrate you to EE, but that won’t work because EE don’t support ADSL or SOADSL. The next logical step would be to migrate you to BT as they do support SOADSL, but that wouldn’t solve your terrible broadband speeds, and the BT supplied router is incapable of simultaneously providing “Digital Voice” telephone service at the same time as an active broadband service with the very low speed of your line.
Before you do anything else, you need to get a better broadband service installed.
As I have told you before, your BEST option is is to sign-up for the cheapest Starlink service and pay for a professional installer to permanently mount the satellite dish on your house, run the cables from the dish to the broadband router inside your house, and setup your router to work with all of your existing equipment.
As I mentioned above, there is a chance that you could achieve a reliable broadband service via “Three” mobile data using an external directional 4G aerial. Again, call in a professional installer to fit the 4G aerial to your roof, run the wires, and setup the new router.
In your area there are two local suppliers that can do this for you -
https://somersetcomms.co.uk/4g-5g/
https://southwestwifi.co.uk/somerset/4g-5g-broadband/
ADVICE – EMAIL
@stathe – do you know whether Plusnet have transferred your email service to Greenby yet ?
If they have and you are happy with it, then skip the rest of this section.
If you haven’t been migrated to Greenby yet, you are in real danger of losing your email completely. Although Openreach are due to switch off everyone’s telephone service in January 2027, phone service providers are going to switch you off well before then, and you are unlikely to still have a traditional landline service by Christmas 2026. Whenever Plusnet decide at short notice to switch-off your phone in the next few months, your ADSL broadband will also cease, which in turn closes your Plusnet account, after which your email service and all of your past emails will also be lost.
Having seen the terrible problems other Plusnet customers have had with the Greenby service, and the uncertainty of when accounts are due to be transferred, my advice would be to give up with the idea of retaining your Plusnet email and instead start again with a reliable paid-for email provider using a brand new email domain name.
I suggest first identifying a new domain name for your new email service, using a tool such as -
IONOS - domain search
… for example ‘stathe.me.uk’ is still available !
… so your new email address could be ‘your-name@stathe.me.uk’
Next, choose an email package, for you I suggest IONOS – “Mail Basic 5”
During the email sign-up process you can add your free chosen domain.
You should get instructions of how to add your new email account to your computer’s email program.
Ensure that your new IONOS email is working, by sending and receiving a few messages, and then go through the tedious process of informing all of your contacts that currently have your Plusnet email address, to in future use your new IONOS email address.
Note that within your IONOS account, there is a email migration tool which can copy/move all of your old Plusnet emails in to your new IONOS account – so when your Plusnet email inevitably disappears then you will have a secure copy of your email history in your new paid-for account.
To catch any stragglers still using your old Plusnet email address, go into your Plusnet “Member Centre”, find the email settings, and change your email mailboxes to automatically ‘forward’ or ‘redirect’ to your new IONOS email address, that way you won’t be accumulating new messages on Plusnet servers that would otherwise be lost when your account closes.
ADVICE – TELEPHONE
Only do this AFTER you have a new broadband service installed AND your email has been migrated away from Plusnet.
You need to initiate the transfer of your existing telephone number to a VoIP supplier.
Be aware that doing this will immediately cease your Plusnet broadband and email !
First choose a new VoIP provider.
I recommend either A&A VoIP or Voipfone – both are excellent !.
A&A has inexpensive PAYG call charges, have excellent technical help, and can provide a pre-configured VoIP phone handset, so all you need to do is plug the new phone into your new broadband router.
Voipfone has various call plans or PAYG, they also can supply a selection of pre-configured VoIP handsets or adaptors. Note that they can supply a pre-configured ATA adaptor which allows your existing analogue telephone handset to convert to VoIP and be plugged in to your new broadband router.
Get your chosen A&A or Voipfone account setup, ensure your new hardware (VoIP handset or ATA adaptor) is installed and ready to go. Then instruct the new provider to “port” your Plusnet landline telephone number to your new digital telephone VoIP account. When the porting completes, your old phone number should be working on your new or converted handset via the internet, your Plusnet ADSL broadband will cease, your Plusnet account will close, and your Plusnet emails will have been deleted.
ADVICE – GET SOME HELP !
I appreciate that you probably don’t understand most of what I’ve written here.
If you don’t have a family member or a tech savvy neighbour consider getting some help.
See if you can get a home visit from AbilityNet – who have DBS checked volunteers near you who can provide free tech support and information for disabled and older people.
Alternatively there are several local companies that you could pay for tech support, for example -
https://www.tauntonhometech.co.uk/
http://nbcomputingsolutions.co.uk/
I hope that helps, although given that you have been bleating for help and ignoring advice for at least five years, I don’t have high hopes that you will do anything, and will probably continue pointlessly complaining about SNR margins, until one day soon sometime before Christmas 2026 you will suddenly lose phone, broadband, and email. Then all the people who have patiently tried to help you, again and again and again, will say WE TOLD YOU SO !.
Plusnet are NOT going to help you.
Many forum members here have given you hours of their time trying to help you.
If you ignore this final attempt to sort out your problems, then there is no hope for you.
You need to take action now to save your phone number and to not lose your ability to email.
Good luck !
Mav
