Openreach Formally Launch “Naked Broadband” via SOGEA

Openreach (BT) has notified us that the full commercial launch of their new “stand-alone broadband” product for UK ISPs – Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA) – has officially started, which they said “marks the beginning of the end” for the old analogue telephone network (known to most as the “landline” phone service).

We’ve been reporting on SOGEA for the past few years and so our regular readers should now be familiar with it, but for those who aren’t we’ll do a little recap. At present most consumers on Openreach’s national copper based network must buy their phone service alongside analogue line rental and then broadband is optionally added on top (most ISPs today will seamlessly bundle these two together by default).

By comparison SOGEA changes this approach by enabling internet providers to sell a physical line just for broadband (i.e. not everybody needs a fixed voice line today), with the voice service thus moving to a VoIP based solution as an optional product from your ISP.

The adoption of SOGEA is thus an important stepping stone toward the plan to switch-off the old Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and adopt an “All IP” (Internet Protocol) network by 2025. Likewise this will help with the transition for FTTP “full fibre” networks, which have no choice but to use an IP based voice solution as optical fibre cannot carry analogue electrical signals (they carry laser light).

According to Openreach, around 15 million UK homes and businesses will need to be switched away from traditional analogue voice services (equating to about 50,000 lines a week until late 2025), which also includes an array of other services that use analogue signals (e.g. everything from security alarms to bus stops, cash machines, elevators, traffic lights and even sluice gates in rivers and canals).

The task is huge but inescapable. For example, there are an estimated 500,000 legacy PSTN-only point of sale machines, and in 2017 there were c.1bn transactions, worth c. £30bn carried over one of these devices. Likewise there are currently up to 1 million telehealth devices in the UK (health pendants / warden controlled systems) which are PSTN-based systems.

A number of UK ISPs, such as Sky Broadband, already have SOGEA based products as part of an Early Market Deployment (EMD) launch, which means the provider has had to accept that Openreach could still make changes to the service before its full commercial launch. Today the EMD phase has officially ended and SOGEA’s commercial launch begins.

The catch with a VoIP based approach is that you often have to plug your existing analogue or DECT phone handset into the back of a broadband router (assuming it has the necessary phone ports) or Analogue Terminal Adapter (ATA), rather than the wall (master) socket, which means your service could be disrupted by power and broadband outages.

Likewise Ofcom still needs to improve phone number portability in order to make it easier for those who wish to port their phone number to a dedicated VoIP provider, as opposed to moving it as part of a broadband ISP switch (check out our guide for more – Swapping to Broadband VoIP from a UK Copper Home Phone Line).

At this point we should clarify that the PSTN switch-off is NOT the same as the physical removal or retirement of the copper line network, which will take many years longer to complete and is dependent upon the gradual expansion of gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband networks.

On top of that it’s worth noting that SOGEA generally refers to Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) based broadband services, while the G.fast version is called SOGFAST (still makes me chuckle) and the variant for ADSL2+ lines is known as SOADSL. Meanwhile voice-only customers in areas with no “fibre” (FTTC/P/G.fast) alternative will eventually be offered a special Single Order Transitional Access Product (SOTAP).

Openreach are currently also running two testbed trials – in Salisbury (Wiltshire) and Mildenhall (Suffolk) – giving ISPs and special service providers the chance to test new products and work out how they can migrate people safely and smoothly (details here and here).