BT Pushes Ahead with Plans to Switch Off Telephone Network

Megalith

Megalith

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British multinational telecommunications company BT is terminating its telephone network and shifting all customers over to IP telephony (internet-based voice calls via fiber) by 2025. Broadband, rather than voice, will constitute the primary service.

Other communications companies in Germany, Japan, Sweden, are already in the process of moving voice to run over IP. Orange has set a goal of having all IP (digital) networks by 2020, and Deutsche Telekom aims to migrate all its lines in Europe to digital by the end of 2018.
 
That will be a bit of a kick in the nuts to BT customers since POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) is full duplex (both parties can talk at the same time) and VOIP is half duplex (one side talks and the other end is silenced until the 1st person stops talking). Half duplex conversations can be pretty annoying when the person you are listening to gets cut off by random noises being picked up by your phone's mouthpiece between incoming voip packets.

Voip is nice and cheap but quality-wise it really doesn't compete with full duplex pots.
 
cyberguyz said:
That will be a bit of a kick in the nuts to BT customers since POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) is full duplex (both parties can talk at the same time) and VOIP is half duplex (one side talks and the other end is silenced until the 1st person stops talking). Half duplex conversations can be pretty annoying when the person you are listening to gets cut off by random noises being picked up by your phone's mouthpiece between incoming voip packets.

Voip is nice and cheap but quality-wise it really doesn't compete with full duplex pots.
Click to expand...
It is? Google voice works pretty good, you can't really tell.
 
Thats very forward thinking of BT and it will most likely save them a lot of money once implemented.
 
Not really news, all major carriers are moving to VoIP as its very expensive to keep 4E/5E/DMS switches online and pay for the circuits. Why the US isn't mentioned is interesting but it's probably because the amount they have converted is less by percentage due to the scale of the US versus the smaller countries. Similar as to why US broadband still rates low. VoIP wired will also soon be replaced with wireless VoIP (Cell).

cyberguyz said:
That will be a bit of a kick in the nuts to BT customers since POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) is full duplex (both parties can talk at the same time) and VOIP is half duplex (one side talks and the other end is silenced until the 1st person stops talking). Half duplex conversations can be pretty annoying when the person you are listening to gets cut off by random noises being picked up by your phone's mouthpiece between incoming voip packets.

Voip is nice and cheap but quality-wise it really doesn't compete with full duplex pots.
Click to expand...

When VoIP was in it's infancy and comparable to walkie-talkies, yes this complaint was true. However these days its very full duplex and if echo cancellers with proper uncompressed codecs and VoIP handset is used you can't tell a difference.
 
cyberguyz said:
Voip is nice and cheap but quality-wise it really doesn't compete with full duplex pots.
Click to expand...
That's a 20 year old problem with early equipment... any ATA or network operating today handles full-duplex through just about any condition... and modern SIP devices/software can handshake with any endpoint-supported audio CODEC of just about any quality, bandwidth permitting.

If you still have half-duplex problems today, you may be using an extremely cheap carrier, or your ATA/SIP phone is borked.
 
cyberguyz said:
That will be a bit of a kick in the nuts to BT customers since POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) is full duplex (both parties can talk at the same time) and VOIP is half duplex (one side talks and the other end is silenced until the 1st person stops talking). Half duplex conversations can be pretty annoying when the person you are listening to gets cut off by random noises being picked up by your phone's mouthpiece between incoming voip packets.

Voip is nice and cheap but quality-wise it really doesn't compete with full duplex pots.
Click to expand...
What in the hell are you talking about? Modern VOIP is not half duplex, it hasn't been half duplex for ages. If that's your experience with VOIP in the past 10 years or more, you need to do some serious research or take your existing equipment/service, douse it in gasoline, and toss a lit match onto the pile.
 
I had this conversation three years ago with someone who was frantic about the intra-state trunk going VOIP. Although it took a half-hour to figure out why they were worried, their reasons for not wanting VOIP were typically non-tech - if someone cuts the line, the phone service will be lost. Well, duh ... How does that change from the current phone service?

People don't understand VOIP, they confuse it with cell phones, they confuse it with the internet, or they give the old phone system powers that it never had. VOIP doesn't degrade over distance, it can reroute past a broken juncture, it can travel over fiber, and it can use local infrastructure.
 
The only thing that was good about POTS after awhile was that it worked when the power was out. With cell coverage these days it's not needed. I have a house phone on top of my cellular phone but my house phone is also cell based.
 
MrGreg62 said:
The only thing that was good about POTS after awhile was that it worked when the power was out. With cell coverage these days it's not needed. I have a house phone on top of my cellular phone but my house phone is also cell based.
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True, until the local station ran out of juice.

VOIP systems from telecom companies here must have a backup battery for the modem to keep her running for a few hours.

I'm with a 3rd party for my VOIP system, but even with a power outage, I still have internet/voip since I run those off a UPS.
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
Not really news, all major carriers are moving to VoIP as its very expensive to keep 4E/5E/DMS switches online and pay for the circuits. Why the US isn't mentioned is interesting but it's probably because the amount they have converted is less by percentage due to the scale of the US versus the smaller countries. Similar as to why US broadband still rates low. VoIP wired will also soon be replaced with wireless VoIP (Cell).



When VoIP was in it's infancy and comparable to walkie-talkies, yes this complaint was true. However these days its very full duplex and if echo cancellers with proper uncompressed codecs and VoIP handset is used you can't tell a difference.
Click to expand...

.......has anyone ever heard of a DDos of a voip service? Is it possible?

I ask because just like after 911, its good to have a backup plan that doesnt rely on a plane to get anywhere. When some hacker figures out how to hack such a system, phone calls dont have a backup plan. I know its a monetary overhead but having something that cant be hacked from the other side of the world is great to have.

Kinda like Americas Nuclear arsenal depending on "ANALOG computers". Not everything should be moved to microelectronics and ip addresses.
 
We still have 3 legs on the stool of voice communication:
1) Physical land line internet (VOIP) which replaces copper wire telephony but does more.
2) Cellular (which has more or less become everyone's "primary" phone.
3) Ham Radio for when the world goes sideways.

So it's not all doom, it's just a different package of the same thing.

A package lacking privacy of the old system... but still pretty much the same thing.
 
Verizon tried to sneak a VOIP system into our business. It was a horrible experience. Echoes, words being corrupted from dropped data, latency issues, and a malady of other problems, especially when overseas calls were being made.

It took us about 2 days to discover what they had done and only with the threat of a lawsuit did they finally come back out and switch us back to landlines. Now that Frontier Communication owns it, it is even worse than before as they seem to be transitioning to VOIP internally, even when you have a landline and we are getting back to terrible phone service.

We find we are having to go back to email, for some customers, as the phone/cell service is so bad we cannot talk to them. Feels like the tin can over string days are back.
 
I can only speak for german phone lines and what Deutsche Telekom did to it and to some of my customers :( NONE, really none, of the transitions worked as planned.

The technicians don't know the devices they need to configure ( Bintek and Funkwerk iirc), dates didnt match, lines that dropped, etc etc etc.... a true IT nightmare ! prepare and expect the worst to happen for weeks and months.

Very sad.
 
Merc1138 said:
What in the hell are you talking about? Modern VOIP is not half duplex, it hasn't been half duplex for ages. If that's your experience with VOIP in the past 10 years or more, you need to do some serious research or take your existing equipment/service, douse it in gasoline, and toss a lit match onto the pile.
Click to expand...

Just speaking from my own experience with it at home and at my office (which uses voip). I use an OOMA voip setup on a 300/100mbit (and it does actually get that speed) internet connection as my land line. Make any noise while someone is tasking to you they cut out. It is annoying!Beyond that the actual voice quality is as good as I got via cable and bell landlines. No jitters or latency issue to note.

--- edit ---
Did a little looking around to see how voip may have changed. While it seems the protocol itself may have been updated other features like echo cancellation will simulate half duplex behavior.
 
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Khahhblaab said:
.......has anyone ever heard of a DDos of a voip service? Is it possible?

I ask because just like after 911, its good to have a backup plan that doesnt rely on a plane to get anywhere. When some hacker figures out how to hack such a system, phone calls dont have a backup plan. I know its a monetary overhead but having something that cant be hacked from the other side of the world is great to have.

Kinda like Americas Nuclear arsenal depending on "ANALOG computers". Not everything should be moved to microelectronics and ip addresses.
Click to expand...

VoIP systems in places with no dedicated or educated security staff get hacked all the time. Results in spoofed spam calls going to anyone they can before it's stopped (for a start). Any IP system can be DDOS'd, flaws inherent in the system.

I see your point but for your example the nuke system is a closed network (or better be) which can easily remain on its own. The phone system relying on circuit to circuit is unrealistic and an enormous waste of resources. It's also become very difficult to keep those 100 year old systems operational.
 
I'm sure this will go over good with all the older/retired people.

Give me back my phone line and get off my lawn you whippersnappers :D
 
And the second a disaster hits, they are going to lose all communication. POTS stayed live when the power went out, but VOIP will not. Then the cell towers will get overwhelmed and you no longer have the ability to call for help. We've had cell towers get overwhelmed from a minor earthquake with no damage.... Imagine an actual emergency.
 
most people are going this way. Even people with cooper lines could be voip in the network side. i plan on switching to VOIP only for my work's network next year. Most customers won't see a difference as the backend handles everything.
 
Biznatch said:
And the second a disaster hits, they are going to lose all communication. POTS stayed live when the power went out, but VOIP will not. Then the cell towers will get overwhelmed and you no longer have the ability to call for help. We've had cell towers get overwhelmed from a minor earthquake with no damage.... Imagine an actual emergency.
Click to expand...
As mentioned by Exavior, lots of systems already run VOIP on the back end anyway. Plus a lot of new homeowners/renters aren't even bothering to get landlines these days. Additionally you mentioned earthquakes, I too live in an earthquake prone area but the reality is that considering the way the utilities are setup in many locations, if there's enough damage that causes cables to get physically cut, the phone would be out with the power anyway. The only time your scenario would apply would be if the power grid in your local neighborhood went down but the CO stayed online which is likely a fairly small localized event and not a 7.0+ quake leveling buildings and freeways.
 
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