The Great Voice Switchover
What is the Great Voice Switchover?
The UK telephone network that weaves throughout the country is going through a major technological change.
This national network has been the backbone of our communications for over a century, linking our homes and businesses across every village, town and city. However, we have now reached a turning-point where we need to move away from the 140-year-old copper-wire network and bring everyone on to a modern internet-based network. This new network will use fibre optic cables instead of copper wires to transmit your telephone calls and internet traffic far more efficiently, enabling additional services to operate.
It is expected that the old copper network will be completely switched off and everyone moved over to the new internet-based telephone network by 2025. This huge change will affect everyone in the UK, and we will all have to adapt.
What does this mean for us in South Witham?
If you have your Phone and Broadband delivered by a BT cable from a pole then your phone may currently be plugged into the phone socket of an ADSL adaptor or the phone socket of the Openreach Master socket.
With your router attached to the other socket.
After the switchover, your phone will connect to a phone socket on your router or If you Have DECT phones and EE/BT/Plusnet's latest router then you will be able to add your old Dect phones to the DECT base station enabled in the router. Otherwise, all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will supply you for free with a router that supports this.
Do your grandparents have broadband?
If not check to see if they have a socket like this :
or
If they do get on to the telephone supplier and ask them to send an Openreach engineer to install a Master Socket Openreach has to do this Free of Charge.
BT will offer a switchover service for free to those who are on a phone-only contract.
WARNING: If you have wired extensions running from your master socket if they have not already been disconnected they should be. You may see a speed increase on your broadband ( on an Openreach connection you should have between 14- 56 Mbps depending on where you live in the village. if your connection is below 10mbps check for old extensions without a filter as this may increase your speed now. )
If you are with Buckminster Broadband for your broadband and phone . Great News you are already switched over
Group Audience
Broadband
OG Group
South Witham telephony is provided by two infrastructure suppliers: BT Openreach and Buckminster Broadband.
The BT Exchange for the village is Thistleton and there are two types of connections into the village for telephony and broadband services.
Cabinet 1 (located just around from the Village shop, opposite the BT PayPhone) or an exchange only line.
Fibre connections are available on both lines! ( Technically these are Fibre Hybrid Lines as its s fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) technology. Initially, we were expecting Fibre to the Premise by 2025 but BT OpenReach has rescinded that expectation and currently has no plans to add the village to the ultrafast broadband project!!! )
The Exchange Only Line (EOL) - which is a direct connection from your premises into the exchange at Thistleton will have a maximum fibre speed of 4-5.5 Mbps. This is because from the exchange to the home is a copper connection ranging from 1.8 to2.4 km in length. It is equivalent to the old ADSL configuration.
A Cabinet 1 connection can have up to 78 Mbps, this equates to (essentially) up to 56Mbps, but can be slower as some lines in the village use aluminium rather than copper. business and residential connections are . In reality these connection slow down the further you are from the green cabinets If you live on Moor Lane speeds range from 34 to 20 Mbps whilst some on templars way are as slow as 14Mbps ( Aluminum lines here)
All suppliers except Buckminster Broadband use the BT OpenReach infrastructure.
Buckminster Broadbands internet package is not delivered over traditional cables but uses a wireless network. They will install an aerial on your property and this will connect you to their network. Speeds are currently up to 30Mbps.
To find out all the suppliers of broadband in the village go to Samknows Broadband Checker