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Home phone curiosity

9fingers

9fingers

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Romsey Hampshire between Southampton and the New F
For about a year our home phone has changed over to VOIP and comes in via the router. This has a call logger and an option to block pita callers.
4528C6BA-28C0-42F8-B317-5807E02E62CF.png
As you can see a certain Paul Lacoux who is already blocked tried 8 times within a minute to call us.
We know of no such person.
I assume it must be an automatic dialler but how has he managed to enter a name where the caller ID telephone numer would normally show??
It does not bother us as the call never gets through but curious nevertheless
 
We did away with our land lines when we unceremoniously dumped Virgin and changed to Zen and a Fritz! box - Rob
 
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MattS said:
If you ditched the landline, does that mean calls come to your mobiles?
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No. The house phones connect to the modem and the calls come via t’internet.
Soon everyone who want a house phone will be switched to this system. Meant to be done by 2025 but no doubt is running late as the deadline approaches.
 
This is a bit of a reassuring article for those who do not have broadband.

www.ispreview.co.uk

Openreach Prep Alternative UK Analogue Style Phone Product

Openreach is developing an additional phone line product, which does NOT require a broadband connection to function and will be targetted at vulnerable and edge
www.ispreview.co.uk www.ispreview.co.uk

For those who do have broadband, wonder how many have their router powered by a UPS (as do we)
 
MattS said:
If you ditched the landline, does that mean calls come to your mobiles?
Click to expand...
We received so few calls on our land line it wasn't worth the angst to keep it. Those that we did receive mostly needed to know when the golf club bar opened🤣 as the numbers were very similar. Rog S put me onto Zen as we were totally hacked off with the continual price rises from Virgin, so we now have a very comparable broadband system at half the cost of the odious Virgin one. Switching over was dead easy and their help desk is based 'oop narth' in Yorkshire, rather than 4000 miles away. Highly recommended - Rob
 
RogerS said:
For those who do have broadband, wonder how many have their router powered by a UPS (as do we)
Click to expand...
Roger is your UPS used solely for powering the low power requirements of the modem?

As far as I can see, unless a household has very deep pockets for a large UPS or a portable generator that can be powered up within a few minutes; national grid outage for downed lines etc. is still a problem.

UPS at realistic prices for the average household may be excellent for smoothing out problematic local glitches but don't provide much protection beyond allowing controlled shut down in the event of a grid failure.

During two grid failures experienced in our area in the last 12 months, shortest being over 6 hours the power supply control centre has communicated via BT landline to check that we did not require additional assistance and update on expected re-instatement of power.
 
I've accumulated them over the years (and actually have a spare!). One for the router and stuff. One for my iMac and one on the Missus's iMac. We get more nuisance auto-connect trips these days.

If we do have a 'proper' power cut then I'm on the gennie within 5 minutes.

Northern Powergid send out updates via the mobile and also land line.
 
Woodbloke said:
We received so few calls on our land line it wasn't worth the angst to keep it. Those that we did receive mostly needed to know when the golf club bar opened🤣 as the numbers were very similar. Rog S put me onto Zen as we were totally hacked off with the continual price rises from Virgin, so we now have a very comparable broadband system at half the cost of the odious Virgin one. Switching over was dead easy and their help desk is based 'oop narth' in Yorkshire, rather than 4000 miles away. Highly recommended - Rob
Click to expand...
And I'm part of the scheme to reward both new joiners to Zen (and to a much lesser extent me). They keep trying to 'sell' me the new package offering a huge number of call minutes but since we rarely call out, it's not cost-effective. Hopefully we'll be moving soon which, sadly, means my current 'for life' contract ceases.
 
RogerS said:
And I'm part of the scheme to reward both new joiners to Zen (and to a much lesser extent me). They keep trying to 'sell' me the new package offering a huge number of call minutes but since we rarely call out, it's not cost-effective. Hopefully we'll be moving soon which, sadly, means my current 'for life' contract ceases.
Click to expand...
I did hear a little whisper some time ago Rog that in the not too distant future, all land lines are scheduled to go the way of the dodo?? - Rob
 
Woodbloke said:
I did hear a little whisper some time ago Rog that in the not too distant future, all land lines are scheduled to go the way of the dodo?? - Rob
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Yep, the PSTN shutdown. All bar landlines for the listed vulnerable will be shut down. I binned off my Sky broadband package a while back due to getting Starlink and never using land line (other than for MiL to call us on) and I asked to keep just the basic phone package so we kept our number but they said no, unless you're vulnerable then anyone removing their package loses their number as part of the shutdown/reclaim.
 
Doubt it, the plan is to remove it altogether, they just understand that particularly for the elderly that isn't viable. I don't know the specifics behind it but phone lines as you know them will be gone in a couple of years.
 
I was interviewed for the “consultation” on making this happen. The plan was that the vulnerable would be given a base unit phone that had a back up battery and works on the mobile network as well as via a wired broadband connection. If someone doesn’t already have a broadband connection and needs one to retain phone connectivity BT (and I think Virgin) said they would not charge any extra for it.

There were still a lot of practical questions still unanswered last I heard such as how Telecare services will work but in fairness there seemed to be a genuine will to make sure it all works.
 
Blackswanwood said:
I was interviewed for the “consultation” on making this happen. The plan was that the vulnerable would be given a base unit phone that had a back up battery and works on the mobile network as well as via a wired broadband connection. If someone doesn’t already have a broadband connection and needs one to retain phone connectivity BT (and I think Virgin) said they would not charge any extra for it.

There were still a lot of practical questions still unanswered last I heard such as how Telecare services will work but in fairness there seemed to be a genuine will to make sure it all works.
Click to expand...
That's all well and good provided that you have a mobile signal and the bit of copper isn't too long or too flakey for a broadband connection. Fibrus (who are part of Project Gigabit) had wanted to be the supplier for fibre into Northumberland. That was until they discovered that the existing infrastructure is so poor that the money they would get from the Govt scheme was dwarfed by the actual costs that they would incur. So they pulled out.

A friend lives in Cumbria and Openreach have condemned the telegraph pole feeding the five houses. Openreach are not replacing the pole. Mobile coverage is OK....at the bottom of the garden.
 
RogerS said:
That's all well and good provided that you have a mobile signal and the bit of copper isn't too long or too flakey for a broadband connection. Fibrus (who are part of Project Gigabit) had wanted to be the supplier for fibre into Northumberland. That was until they discovered that the existing infrastructure is so poor that the money they would get from the Govt scheme was dwarfed by the actual costs that they would incur. So they pulled out.

A friend lives in Cumbria and Openreach have condemned the telegraph pole feeding the five houses. Openreach are not replacing the pole. Mobile coverage is OK....at the bottom of the garden.
Click to expand...
I’m not close to it anymore but recall that there was a crossover with the plan to get broadband into rural communities. Quickline have been laying new fibre cable is the villages around us as part of this but I don’t know how advanced it is overall.
 
Irrelevant to you folks but we are still struggling to get fibre to the house due to blocked conduit under the road and no overhead access due to trees. My latest suggestion to both ISP and infrastructure provided is if that cant be bothered to dig up the road then perhaps they could install a new pole. Current broadband speeds meet all our needs but my understanding is that the copper network here will be switched off in the not too distant future.
Mobile reception is dire, less than 3g.
We live in hope.
 
RogerS said:
For those who do have broadband, wonder how many have their router powered by a UPS (as do we)
Click to expand...
Yes, we have a UPS powering our router and another powering our network hub and NAS and these worked fine in a recent powercut. But the ONT fitted by OpenReach when they installed the fibre also has a backup provided by 4 AA rechargable batteries which failed after about 50 minutes. We were one of the first areas with FTTP so this was installed about 3 or 4 years ago and the AA batteries were nearing the end of their life and i will have to change them. from what I've read they no longer provide the backup and I assume that they now install an alternative ONT or an easy method to power the ONT.

In our case the modem and hub continued working fine but the failing ONT backup meant no FTTP signal so we lost internet and phone landline until the mains power was restored after a couple of hours. Apparently the rechargable batteries should last 2 or 3 years before they start to lose their charge holding capacity.
 
To save others also Googling ......Optical Network Terminal ... a new TLA to me :)
 
We have fibre all the way from the exchange to our house. But broadband is via snail pace copper and corroded aluminium. The Openreach engineer who called to fix a connection defect last week, asked why we don't use fibre. "Because Open Reach are in denial that it is there". You could not make it up actually.
 
I had signed up with Alcom, a local company under the government scheme and they shoved in all the cables into the village as close as 50 yards from the front of our house when the Gov pulled the plug and put it out to tender. Alcom lost out to a Scottish company who tell me there are no plans to upgrade us to full fibre and Alcom won't connect us because the builders (dozy gits) failed to lay the original telephone cables in trunking so no way through and too expensive to install.

It irritates me no end that I could get x4 the speed for 20% less than I'm paying BT for an iffy service.
 
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