{"id":35537,"date":"2023-08-29T14:55:27","date_gmt":"2023-08-29T13:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=35537"},"modified":"2023-08-29T14:57:12","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T13:57:12","slug":"bt-rolling-out-uk-digital-voice-service-into-northern-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/08\/bt-rolling-out-uk-digital-voice-service-into-northern-ireland.html","title":{"rendered":"BT Rolling Out UK Digital Voice Service into Northern Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Broadband ISP BT<\/a> has today continued the region-by-region deployment of their Internet Protocol (IP) based home phone service, Digital Voice, by announcing that they’re about to start the roll-out in Northern Ireland, which will be followed this autumn by customers in the North West and across London.<\/p>\n

The Digital Voice<\/strong> product was designed to replace BT<\/a>\u2019s old analogue phone service, which will cease to function once the Public Switched Telephone Network<\/strong> (PSTN) is completely withdrawn by December 2025. After that point, all future phone services \u2013 whether delivered via copper (ADSL<\/a>, FTTC<\/a>, G.fast<\/a>) or Fibre-to-the-Premises<\/strong> (FTTP<\/a>) lines \u2013 will become IP (internet) based and require broadband to function.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> The move to IP \/ VoIP based phone services is NOT limited to BT<\/a> and is an industry-wide change that affects all providers of phone services.<\/div>\n

The latest update reminds that they recently started (or rather re-started – after a long pause<\/a>) their Digital Voice deployment in the East Midlands during July (here<\/a>), before moving to Yorkshire and the Humber in August (here<\/a>). BT states that they’ve “made a strong start<\/em>” and “around two million customers nationally<\/em>” have now switched to the service, although this is exactly the same figure as they gave all the way back in June 2023.<\/p>\n

The move into a regional roll-out phase followed complaints from customers, particularly vulnerable users, who discovered some of the caveats of modern IP based systems. For example, without battery backup<\/a>, the service won\u2019t work during power outages and some kit, such as older home alarms and remote medical monitoring alarms, may cease to function.<\/p>\n

As before, customers in N.Ireland can expect to be contacted at least 4 weeks before being upgraded, to help ensure they\u2019re ready for the switch. The regional approach is being supported by general awareness communications and advertising campaigns, delivered across local and regional media to help explain the steps required to make the move to Digital Voice. Users will generally plug their handset into the broadband router or an ATA [analogue] adapter instead of a wall socket (more details<\/a>). BT will also be present on high streets and at local town hall drop-ins to help explain the change.<\/p>\n

The operator is also conducting a trial that will rollout Digital Voice to a limited number of existing broadband customers who are over 70. But BT won\u2019t be proactively switching anyone who falls under the below criteria, where it has this information available:<\/p>\n