Digital Voice: Switching Off the Elderly
Due to a perceived conflict of interest, this contributor’s employer has asked them to publish anonymously. While HIP generally prefers to acknowledge the source of its articles, in this case we can verify the writer.
The famous 1983 advert shows JR Hartley using a working telephone to locate a copy of his book, Fly Fishing. Fast forward to 2023 and vulnerable clients find themselves disconnected from their landline phones and Telecare health monitoring devices as BT migrates to Digital Voice.
My 83-year-old mum was moved to Digital Voice as a new BT customer. As my mum found herself promptly cut off, I discovered others tweeting into the abyss as their landline-dependent relatives, many also with healthcare monitoring devices, were left without a phone or Telecare service. BT’s 30-million customer base will be migrated to Digital Voice by 2025.
THE COPPER SWITCH OFF
The copper line has been good for telephone calls since 1911 but not so good for high-speed internet in 2023. BT plans to meet the demands of multi-household streamers, gamers, and working-from-home voice-conferencing users, but this comes at the cost of the landline user.
BT retires the copper line in 2025 after replacing it with full fibre optic cable, arguing that the copper line is expensive to maintain, replacement parts are no longer made and quoting long standing service issues.
BT waves goodbye to a remotely-powered service which allows emergency 999 calls in a power cut and replaces it with Digital Voice which relies on power and a network to operate. If you have no power, you have no phone; if you have no network, you have no phone; if you have Telecare and no power or network, you are scuppered.
As Digital Voice is promoted to be “coming soon” in the East Midlands, National Grid tweets power cuts in Nottingham, Leicester, Bath, Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford, Brixham, Ashprington, Cardigan, Tewkesbury and Spalding. Battery back-up kits to power a router and digital handset exist, and so too does the hybrid phone that can switch to a mobile network. The battery back-up lasts 60 minutes and the hybrid phone won’t help you in a rural area with poor network coverage. Neither products are widely-issued, despite Which? reporting that Ofcom “made it a requirement for telecoms providers to identify people who are reliant on their landline and provide them with a free back-up option in case there’s a power outage.” (Fletcher, Y; 2023, see HIP website).
Some landline users cannot use a mobile phone or a digital handset. Cognitive impairment, reduced hand strength, sight-impairment – common coexisting conditions in the elderly – make digital devices inaccessible. An 87-year-old with dementia was reported in the Stratford Herald to have struggled to use the digital handset and lost service for several days on three separate occasions due to network and equipment failure. She was later found wandering and confused with her Telecare device disconnected and unable to alert family or health services. Twitter user @PeterGD messaged that his 92-year-old dad was struggling to use a mobile phone in lieu of a digital handset:
“How do you propose the person who has mild dementia and arthritis in their hands and fingers will remember to recharge the life line phone? How do you think they will manage to plug in the lead when they are partially sighted? You have not tried and tested these products on the old.”
@piersmudd tweeted to BT reporting his terminally ill mother disconnected for two weeks and @SChristiansen87 tweeted that her parents’ 91-year-old neighbour had been disconnected for five weeks, adding “he’s really scared with the isolation. It’s heartbreaking”.
MY STORY
BT lost my mum’s 41-year-old telephone number when porting to Digital Voice and eight weeks of inaudible sound quality followed. The digital phone soon failed to receive incoming calls. BT sent three replacement handsets which did not work. An Openreach engineer visited and was equally unable to make the digital phone receive calls. This wasn’t just happening to my mum:
@Heather3 posted on an online forum that she “Can’t receive incoming calls in Digital Voice phone since installation by BT engineer. On Wednesday 28 June I had two BT engineers come out, one from Openreach and the other a BT engineer. They set up my digital voice phone but I have never been able to receive incoming calls. I need the phones to work as I work from home!!! I have phoned BT everyday since the 28 June but no one as yet has been able to solve the problem. Please BT get your act together!!! I need those phones to work as it is essential to my job!”
BT asked me to buy an old-style handset and connect it directly to the router via an adaptor. I was surprised to find myself in an Argos queue to collect an analogue handset to replace a digital phone that could not be made to work. This hack worked for four weeks and then my mum lost incoming and outgoing calls for ten days.
BT could not book an engineer sooner than this. This led me to complain to the Communications Ombudsman, and the report reveals an operational flaw:
“At this point we note that while Openreach forms part of the BT Group, it is a separate business to BT Consumer, which provides your services. Openreach is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the network and passes the charges for its work on to your service provider, in your case BT. BT has no control over the timescales Openreach provides to undertake any work” (report excerpt, 30th of June).
My take on this: the operational infrastructure between BT and Openreach is not designed to enable an 83-year-old landline-dependent user to be prioritised over a 30-year-old with multiple alternative means of communicating with the world.
VOLUNTEERS
A positive was found in the meeting of Twitter user @MaggieCollard3. We found solace in directly messaging our frustration as our mums were left at sea by BT. We also shared a curiosity for the Twitter account @landlinesgoDigi behind landlinesgodigital who first introduced themselves by elbowing into our tweets to BT and sending us unsolicited technical guides. Maggie and I were both in a protracted ‘no-phone-at-all situation’, how could a technical DIY guide from @landlinesgoDigi help where an Openreach engineer couldn’t?
@landlinesgoDigi seemed to be defending BT in their free time. The account’s biography states “volunteers” and is followed by 18 users including civil and cloud engineers, a broadband technical writer, a senior Ofcom PR manager and Ofcom’s official account. The ICANN LOOKUP tool shows website registration has been redacted for privacy, yet The Wayback Machine pinpoints that the website started shortly after BT’s failed digital launch in 2022. The account promotes Digital Voice in newly-migrated areas and appears to bamboozle online complainers with technical gobbledygook:
“Some ways to resolve this:
1) Use multi DECT based handset & unit
2) Some offer engineer to install extension socket to back up router or a wireless based adaptor
3) DIY at own risk voice reinjection that wires extension sockets to router (local telecom engineer in yellow pages)”
@oldlong replied “But I didn’t want to change and I can’t understand a word you’ve said. But, thank you. Very kind.”
The tweet clearly isn’t actually for @oldlong’s benefit. He “can’t understand a word”. The tweet serves to shut down Old Long and promote the narrative that issues are ‘user failure’ not service failure, a theme echoed in the apology for Digital Voice given in April 2022 by Marc Allera, CEO of the Consumer Division at BT Group:
“We underestimated the disruptive impact this upgrade would have on some of our customers. With hindsight we went too early, before many customers – particularly those who rely more heavily on landlines – understood why this change is necessary and what they needed to do.” (Marc Allera, BT).
Which? states that there are “a million UK voice-only customers, some of whom will not have any access to broadband”, adding that voice-only customers are “more likely to be older, financially vulnerable, not working or from lower socioeconomic groups” (Fletcher, Y; 2023). These users will not have recourse to mainstream complaint channels or an online presence to complain in public.
The elderly switch-off is happening quietly.
Digital Voice issues:
The digital handset can unpair with the router. Vulnerable users will be unable to reset this independently and will require an engineer.
BT uses Openreach engineers and according to the Communications Ombudsman “has no power over timescales”.
The handset requires the press of a button to receive and to make a call: additional steps to picking up a phone and saying “hello” or dialling a number. The handset can be replaced by an analogue phone via an adaptor but this is prone to unpairing with the router.
If the internet drops or a mouse sneezes, the phone will unpair with the router: this is not a simple fix for a vulnerable user dependent on their landline.
The handset has not been designed for elderly users with common age-related issues.
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Hi I am 75 and my house phone has had a line fault for two weeks. Shell the provider said via a friends mobile that open reach would fix the problem in a few days, that was 10 days ago. I am left in the dark. I pay for a service, that is not provided, and customer services wants to phone them, how can I with out a phone. Nobody seems interested, nor bothered, i just sit here. Any help, assistance would be welcome. Regards n Bradley