On
25th February I broke - pension excepted - my last link with BT; the company I
joined in 1962. Not the wrench it might have been, my loyalty to it has
gradually been chipped away by price increases and the sort of poor service my
last boss warned would happen if the company continued to pursue the course that
even 30 years ago it had embarked upon.
I could then have told you all sorts of reasons why BT was technically better
than the cheapskate upstart companies, many relating to network resilience
under load but the constant pressures of competition has led to BT becoming yet
another cheapskate company but one that charges premium prices.
My phone bill just for the landline was heading in the direction of £40 a month
and the various discounts once offered have not been seen for several years.
Once the fibre came all the way into the house the copper line could be
abandoned and VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phones could replace the analogue ones.
If you have been reading the letters page of the Daily Telegraph you will know
that people are not happy about the enforced move to ‘Digital Voice’. There are
definitely pros and cons and there is no doubt that the change has caused me a
great deal of work.
Analogue phones would happily work in a power cut because the basics ran on a 50
volt battery at the telephone exchange. You could also run several phones over the
same internal wire. Mine came into the upstairs ‘office’, through two bedrooms, down to the
lounge and out to the hall where the line used to enter the house. I reversed it
so that it served the router first.
Telephones could be plugged in anywhere down the internal line. Not so with
digital, each is a distinct computer requiring its own line back to the router.
I had provided eight such lines into my lounge but the AV takes up six of them
and the remaining two are just where you don’t need a phone to be. Twelve years
ago I never considered that a phone would need a LAN port.
I have been in the roof and up a big ladder outside for two days on the trot.
Other downsides which don’t affect me is that services such as Bexley’s
Emergency Link Line currently rely on a traditional phone line and I know of no
devices tailored to the deaf, like a Taxi Rank bell to alert them to a call or a
phone which can go especially loud.
On the other hand VOIP phones can be powered via the data cable but I hadn’t made
provision for that. Another job that has taken me away from Bonkers. Fortunately
my router has a back up battery big enough to keep the internet running all day.
As with all phones it is a right old faff to enter your contacts’ phone numbers into a phone but my
friendly ISP has helped out with an easily edited webpage which downloads the
names and numbers into all my phones and accessible only from my fixed IP address.
I suppose I could have simplified things with a DEC phone - no I don’t know what
that stands for - but I hate the things.
Everybody has this landline threat hanging over them and I suspect many will
give up and rely totally on their mobiles. I can’t see that doing BT a lot of
good. Like that other off-shoot of the GPO, the Royal Mail, they seem to be keen
to kill off the old services. Postage up to 95p a stamp! Don’t expect any Christmas cards
from me this year.