The death knell has been sounded for the traditional landline telephone. From 2025, all households and businesses will need the internet to make calls under a major digital shake-up.
It means millions of customers will be pushed online for the first time or forced to rely on a mobile phone instead.Can you still call them 'customers' when they've not got a choice?
Strangly, this isn't being pushed by the Tory government's relentless 'change everything' policies, for once:
Those without internet may need an engineer to visit their home to get them set up and those with older phones could need to buy a new handset.
Industry insiders compared the move to the switch to digital TV in 2012, when broadcasters stopped transmitting traditional analogue signals to household rooftop or indoor aerials. But while that change was led by the Government, the switch to 'digital' calls is being driven by the telecoms industry.
And while it's not going to affect me much, since my landline merely serves to generate spam calls and 'Microsoft engineers' who want me to go online to fix things on my computer (I just laugh and hang up) there are real fears for a lot of customers:
...experts have raised concerns that millions of older and vulnerable households which are not online, do not use a mobile phone or live in a rural area with poor connectivity are at risk of being left behind.
One thing's for sure - this is to benefit the providers of the service, not the consumers of it.
I'm like you. I have a landline but don't know the number and never use it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, this trend for firms to push people onto technology for their benefit, but not their cost, is starting to get a bit galling.
Banks are forcing on line customers to require mobile phones so they can check transactions in real time. Not that it will stop the scammers and the fraud but it will require every customer to get a mobile phone. So where can I get a bank account that won't need a mobile phone and if I can't find one how to I do my banking.
There are certain things that are necessary for life. A mobile phone shouldn't be one of them.
In Oz the landlines are carried by the NBN, which is the only communications carrier. The NBN (National Broadband Network) was foisted upon us by the Government. Even companies like Telstra - which used to be the premier telephone co - have to use it. When the NBN goes down (from faaaailures or maintenance) the phones go off too.
ReplyDeleteSo many if not most folk have a 'smart-phone' of one ilk or another. And the ubiquitous 'apps' insisted upon by gummunt. I do not.
I wonder if this plan is to do away with the 'free 1 hour phone call' in use on the internet/tv/landline packages? I regulary phone an elderly relative, as do other member os fher family, knowing that we can offer her some kind of company for an hour at a time with no cost to anyone except, perhaps, the phone companies. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people who use this facility and it would be a great shame if it were to end. Still,as long as the CEOs of firms such as vodafone or O2 see their company profits increase through an increased use of mobile phones, what's a shed load of elderly pensioners unable to speak with their families?
ReplyDeleteAn interesting comparison to the 1960s/70s, when the mains gas providers decided to convert to natural gas. The entire cost of that conversion programme was borne by the providers, the gas industry, even to the extent of supplying brand new appliances where the existing ones could not be converted.
ReplyDeleteAs the proposed conversion to on-line voice-calls will be similarly mandatory, then the utility providers (BT etc.) should bear all the costs - as should also have been the case with digital TV, same principle.
"Can you still call them 'customers' when they've not got a choice?"
ReplyDeletePrecisely.
So the advantage over Whatsapp is?
ReplyDeleteAnd does the internet have battery backup? Like the old phone system had.