Openreach Begin Consulting on Withdrawal of UK PSTN Phone Network

As expected Openreach (BT) has today begun consulting broadband ISPs and the wider UK telecoms industry on their plan to withdraw the old traditional analogue Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and replace it with new digital, internet based (all IP) services by 2025.

Right off the bat we should clarify that this is NOT a removal of the old copper lines that underpin such services but rather a change of how the service over the top of those lines is communicated, although it will in future help to facilitate the replacement of copper with pure fibre optic (FTTH/P) lines (you’ll only be able to use Internet Protocol (IP) based traffic over the latter).

PSTN Supports the Following Wholesale Products:

WLR – Wholesale Line Rental

WLR3 enables CPs to offer their own-brand telephony service over the PSTN copper network. Openreach provides, maintains and repairs the lines so that CPs can supply services to their customers, without having to maintain a network themselves.

ISDN – Integrated Services Digital Network

This is a telephone-based network system that transmits voice and data over copper wires. ISDN enables customers to make phone calls while transmitting files and videoconferencing, but has now been superseded by much more reliable and faster broadband and Ethernet services. There are two types of ISDN: ISDN2 and ISDN30.

LLU SMPF – Local Loop Unbundling Shared Metallic Path Facility

This enables CPs to offer broadband services over a WLR line while another CP (or the same CP) supplies voice services on the same line – hence it being “shared”.

SLU SMPF – Sub-Loop Unbundling Shared Metallic Path Facility

This provides access to an access point in the local network (usually the Openreach street cabinet) to enable SLU CPs to connect to their Fibre network, providing voice services over copper and broadband over fibre.

BT has long spoken of their desire to migrate users off their traditional phone (PSTN) network (here) and switch them to IP-based voice services (e.g. VoIP). We touched on this subject again last year as part of our article – ‘The Changing Face of UK Home Phone Lines and Broadband Provision‘.

As usual there are a number of reasons for why this change is becoming necessary, aside from being a preparatory move to support the eventual migration to a pure fibre optic network. One other reason is because fewer and fewer people are using the old phone service to make calls and most of us only use the related copper line for our home broadband connectivity.

In response copper phone lines are changing. The forthcoming adoption of new services, such as Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA and SOGfast), will make it possible for consumers to order a hybrid copper and fibre optic line based standalone FTTC (VDSL2) or G.fast “broadband-only” service without the bundled analogue phone (voice), although the latter could be optionally added later via a digital Voice-over-IP (VoIP) product.

The aforementioned solution is expected to be known as the Single Order Transitional Access Product (SOTAP).

Mark Logan, Product Director at Openreach ,said:

“We’re launching this consultation because we’re committed to play a leading role in helping the industry move from analogue to digital products by 2025.

As our customers demand faster and more reliable connectivity, we’ve already accelerated our plans to build more Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) broadband technology across Britain, and we expect to reach three million premises by the end of 2020. At the same time, we’re developing new, digital, broadband-only products that will no longer rely on BT’s ageing analogue voice platform.

The move from analogue to digital opens up exciting opportunities for our CPs to develop new products and services which will drive their businesses forward and meet their customers’ demands for decades to come.”

The consultation will run until 27th July 2018 and, before the end of May 2018, Openreach also plan to hold a series of events at venues in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Edinburgh to explain the consultation to customers and industry groups and listen to feedback which may form part of their formal consultation response.

One thing to note here is that the PSTN withdrawal doesn’t extend as far as fully unbundled (MPF LLU) lines, which ISPs such as Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and Vodafone have invested heavily in. This has enabled those providers to take more direct control over related broadband (e.g. ADSL) and phone products, although this may complicate the eventual shift to FTTP.

Finally, another key point to clarify here, in case there’s any confusion, is that the withdrawal of PSTN doesn’t mean that line rental will become free. The phone / voice component of a copper line is only a tiny part of the total cost and many people will still need the same physical copper line for their broadband, at least until FTTP but that carries a premium of its own.

UPDATE 8:53am

Some people wanted to know a bit more about how the new VoIP or Analogue Telephone Adapter (phone) connectivity would work in a SOGEA install with broadband and the general ideal is that you’d connect the phone via your router instead of via the Openreach / BT wall socket.

If you only want broadband then the phone port wouldn’t do anything (i.e. it will be a redundant port on your master socket). More details can be found in the related technical document (SIN517 on page 11 onwards).