Death of Analogue

[Karol]

So what do we think about BT scrapping analogue lines?

Personally I think it's a disaster waiting to happen. Any loss of power with digital and there's no means of calling an ambulance! Talk about setting up the UK for a fall at a time of energy insecurity!

 

[Sutty]

It's far from a complete answer but BT will sell you a small UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) which can provide battery backup for a while. I think they are about £70. I think as they are removing part of the essential service they should be providing them free!
I have a bigger UPS, providing back up to both the router and my pre-existing phone base - the other handsets will work on battery for a few hours.

 

[Karol]

I'm not so worried for myself. It's some of our more vulnerable older people I have concerns for.

 

[Sutty]

I'm not so worried for myself. It's some of our more vulnerable older people I have concerns for.

Absolutely, especially if they have no mobile, or (like me) no signal in the house.

 

[Murox]

Does that mean they will remove all the copper ones cables from the nation's housing? How will we all communicate after the next meteor shower knocks out a few satellites or even Russia blasts a few with missiles. I have no faith in BT living up to anything that involves them spending money for the benefit of the people.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

So what do we think about BT scrapping analogue lines?

Personally I think it's a disaster waiting to happen. Any loss of power with digital and there's no means of calling an ambulance! Talk about setting up the UK for a fall at a time of energy insecurity!

If the hoped for transition to household solar generation develops into more than a trickle many inverter/battery installs have provision to connect essential circuits which run from energy stored in the battery. In effect a UPS in the box.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Does that mean they will remove all the copper ones cables from the nation's housing? How will we all communicate after the next meteor shower knocks out a few satellites or even Russia blasts a few with missiles. I have no faith in BT living up to anything that involves them spending money for the benefit of the people.

Fibre optics should be relatively immune from EMP effects. However if ICBMs start flying I don't think Facebook will be running.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

welcome to the neo liberal free market economy. everyone sat back and watched successive governments sell off our national assets, rubbed their hands with glee when a few scraps in the form of discounted share purchases at the launch. And now it's all gone into the pockets of their mates.
No need to worry about the ability to call an ambulance in an emergency - once the next lot of shysters (regardless of political flag, as they are all much the same now) sell the NHS off to their sponsors, nobody will be able to pay for the ambulance - or the medical treatment at the other end.

 

[roche]

It is insane. On so many levels. The analog telephone system needed no supply except that from the exchange. The coverage was reliable - a copper twisted pair. But the rot goes further -

Above the local exchange analog call were converted to ISDN and ran over either copper or fibre, using a network that was not reliant on IP. With the convergence of IP and voice services, now all communications are in one basket, and far far easier for malicious or hostile actors to interrupt.

The quality of voice calls has steadily reduced as well. People seem to willing to put up with less intelligible voice services, subject to limited audio bandwidth, jitter, and outright loss of connection than a copper line in the 1980s provided.

And yes, there is that whole emergency services, bad coverage thing. Ofcom is absolutely derelict in its duty to the public.

 

[Murox]

Fibre optics should be relatively immune from EMP effects. However if ICBMs start flying I don't think Facebook will be running.

Fibre optics are still a dream up here and by the way what is 5g? and as for Facebook, well thank god it won't be running. I don't think we actually need ICBMs to cripple our own or any other 'western' country these days, just kill a few satellites and even the military won't be speaking to each other. Far easier and cheaper just to watch a nation disintegrate from inside, we all know what happens when there is no leadership and people are left to fill in the gaps.

PS. I live near enough to Faslane not to worry about anything after an event anyway.

 

[user 819]

Another backward step, here we no longer have a landline phone.
BT own Plusnet and they have now transfered us to copper broadband , this now has no option for a landline phone.

 

[enrico]

OK. A bit of social history. As some of you may know, in a previous life I was a police officer. In 1980 I took on a country beat for nine years as I had young children and we were given a nice country house to live in and the children could go to a rural school. In the office attached to the house was a cupboard and in that cupboard was a speaker system and an air raid siren. Every six months or so I was sent a postcard with a time and date. It could be any time of the day. I would have to go to the speaker which until then would have been silent. It would leap into action with a test call. It would sound various pips and then I would be given a password which I would have to send off to prove I had been listening. The idea was that in the event of nuclear war I would have to listen to this device and would be given a five minute warning for a nuclear warhead landing. In that five minutes I would have to sound the air raid siren to give the local villagers a three minute warning. Quite what we were supposed to do in those three minutes I will leave to your imagination. Put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye was the joke phrase of the time.
The reason I tell you all this is that the early warning speakers were linked to the speaking clock system. On the third pip and all that. The speaking clock system was set apart from all other telephone systems and the majority of lines to main bases were buried. the idea being that should all other communications fail the lines for the speaking clock would stay open between strategic places.
The whole system has now gone but in the day these hidden speakers were in many public buildings. All police stations had one as there were police stations or beat offices in most towns and villages.
I had to test the siren once a year. It would lead to numerous phone calls as to what was going on in the village!
Those were the good old days before internet and sputnick was about the only satellite we knew about.
Just thought I would share a bit of old history for those that are interested.

 

[Sutty]

I get notifications to my phone of post to threads I've contributed to. The "notification panel" on my android phone truncates the message.
I was a little alarmed where the forum was going when I read: "Death of anal"

 

[Swarm]

Nobody cared when it was privatised, all we heard were stories of how awful the old GPO service was. That was when non essential maintenance was being carried out and that came to an abrupt halt after we were sold off, which was kind of ironic, selling something which was already publicly owned but a few players made some big bucks. Us minions watched the service we took pride in being eroded and our skills being devalued but the public don't care about that, all they care about is getting what they want, yesterday.
Broadband was rolled out on an aging copper (copper? not always, lots of ali still existed!!!) network, in some mainly rural areas, where it was the bare essentials necessary to cobble together a circuit that was capable of carrying speech. The latest laugh has been watching the multitude of fibre dropwires going up, linking from pole to pole and this is in built up areas, standards that were not acceptable back in the days of copper!! The lack of non essential maintenance to the infrastructure means most of the existing ducts are already full to capacity or blocked or both.
Though people consider it as such, telecommunication was never one of the essential services and we were being told that back in the seventies, nothing changed. I would like to see a reliable, working alternative in place beforehand but that doesn't happen in this country.

 

[MillMeadow]

I get notifications to my phone of post to threads I've contributed to. The "notification panel" on my android phone truncates the message.
I was a little alarmed where the forum was going when I read: "Death of anal"

That would have been a real shame, that all plastic hive company had only just got off the ground!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

OK. A bit of social history. As some of you may know, in a previous life I was a police officer. In 1980 I took on a country beat for nine years as I had young children and we were given a nice country house to live in and the children could go to a rural school. In the office attached to the house was a cupboard and in that cupboard was a speaker system and an air raid siren. Every six months or so I was sent a postcard with a time and date. It could be any time of the day. I would have to go to the speaker which until then would have been silent. It would leap into action with a test call. It would sound various pips and then I would be given a password which I would have to send off to prove I had been listening. The idea was that in the event of nuclear war I would have to listen to this device and would be given a five minute warning for a nuclear warhead landing. In that five minutes I would have to sound the air raid siren to give the local villagers a three minute warning. Quite what we were supposed to do in those three minutes I will leave to your imagination. Put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye was the joke phrase of the time.
The reason I tell you all this is that the early warning speakers were linked to the speaking clock system. On the third pip and all that. The speaking clock system was set apart from all other telephone systems and the majority of lines to main bases were buried. the idea being that should all other communications fail the lines for the speaking clock would stay open between strategic places.
The whole system has now gone but in the day these hidden speakers were in many public buildings. All police stations had one as there were police stations or beat offices in most towns and villages.
I had to test the siren once a year. It would lead to numerous phone calls as to what was going on in the village!
Those were the good old days before internet and sputnick was about the only satellite we knew about.
Just thought I would share a bit of old history for those that are interested.

that wouldn't really matter now as
A) most of the police stations have closed
B) they wouldn't have enough coppers to man them anyway
and as an aside, over the last few years I've been dragged into numerous ESMCP meetings and very soon (as usual with Law Enforcement agencies that translates as 'sometime in the future, but maybe tomorrow - it should have happened last year but it looks like at least another two before it does)when the new ESN finally gets rolled out, it will be an end to conventional radio communications and everything will be on the mobile phone network with everyone being issued with smartphones ( android obviously as IPhones are an enormous security risk) which, as well as giving us access to emails and certain LE databases will act as conventional two way radios.

 

[enrico]

that wouldn't really matter now as
A) most of the police stations have closed
B) they wouldn't have enough coppers to man them anyway
and as an aside, over the last few years I've been dragged into numerous ESMCP meetings and very soon (as usual with Law Enforcement agencies that translates as 'sometime in the future, but maybe tomorrow - it should have happened last year but it looks like at least another two before it does)when the new ESN finally gets rolled out, it will be an end to conventional radio communications and everything will be on the mobile phone network with everyone being issued with smartphones ( android obviously as IPhones are an enormous security risk) which, as well as giving us access to emails and certain LE databases will act as conventional two way radios.

Been using them in Hampshire for years! Came in about ten years ago I think but I have been retired for 20 so who knows, can barely remember my own name

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Been using them in Hampshire for years! Came in about ten years ago I think but I have been retired for 20 so who knows, can barely remember my own name

smart phones maybe, but not the new ESN network, which doesn't exist as yet (should have been rolled out last year but they foolishly put the Met in charge of it) all forces are still using Airwave, as are the water fairies, Border farce, Immigration enforcement (I've been lumbered with upgrading all the Airwave terminals for IE as there is no sign of the new system happening yet and our old SRH terminals are now past it) as well as London underground which also use our system

 

[enrico]

smart phones maybe, but not the new ESN network, which doesn't exist as yet (should have been rolled out last year but they foolishly put the Met in charge of it) all forces are still using Airwave, as are the water fairies, Border farce, Immigration enforcement (I've been lumbered with upgrading all the Airwave terminals for IE as there is no sign of the new system happening yet and our old SRH terminals are now past it) as well as London underground which also use our system

My mistake, yes they use airwave

 

[Gilberdyke John]

OK. A bit of social history. As some of you may know, in a previous life I was a police officer. In 1980 I took on a country beat for nine years as I had young children and we were given a nice country house to live in and the children could go to a rural school. In the office attached to the house was a cupboard and in that cupboard was a speaker system and an air raid siren. Every six months or so I was sent a postcard with a time and date. It could be any time of the day. I would have to go to the speaker which until then would have been silent. It would leap into action with a test call. It would sound various pips and then I would be given a password which I would have to send off to prove I had been listening. The idea was that in the event of nuclear war I would have to listen to this device and would be given a five minute warning for a nuclear warhead landing. In that five minutes I would have to sound the air raid siren to give the local villagers a three minute warning. Quite what we were supposed to do in those three minutes I will leave to your imagination. Put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye was the joke phrase of the time.
The reason I tell you all this is that the early warning speakers were linked to the speaking clock system. On the third pip and all that. The speaking clock system was set apart from all other telephone systems and the majority of lines to main bases were buried. the idea being that should all other communications fail the lines for the speaking clock would stay open between strategic places.
The whole system has now gone but in the day these hidden speakers were in many public buildings. All police stations had one as there were police stations or beat offices in most towns and villages.
I had to test the siren once a year. It would lead to numerous phone calls as to what was going on in the village!
Those were the good old days before internet and sputnick was about the only satellite we knew about.
Just thought I would share a bit of old history for those that are interested.

I seem to recall a weekly test of the town fire Alarm siren in Howden, East Yorkshire, together with ringing of a bell in every volunteer fireman's house during the 1960s. Being a rural farming area the siren could summon the men out at work and it was common to see various vehicles and bicycles congregate at the fire station following a real call.