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SOTAP for Analogue - Product Specifications

AnalogueAnarchy

Casual Member
In response to the recent Openreach SOTAP For Analogue project for a planned August launch across the Openreach network. The corporate-side paper issued by this site admin to reference the parameters of the product say for porting existing 'working' PSTN (WLR3 /LLU) voice only customers.

Initially I assumed this would be a BT-WLR3 working line only product, but the 'LLU' qualification makes me think this might be available for all copper-based LLU providers like TalkTalk.

My 75 y/o disabled auntie with several phone reliant health complaints really could do with a powered copper line, at least for local loop telephony her current set up is a £28 p/m affair with TalkTalk (Fibre 35) as BT would not re-start her 'stopped' line, but TalkTalk would as they run their FTTC fibre35 packaged via copper and so you get an LLU POTS phone too.

Given the detail of the SOTAP for Analogue product spec sheet, does this mean I can request this on the TalkTalk line and get rid of the broadband which she has no use for ?

I'd also like this for my own home too as I don't have big digital data requirements, but do like to have a traditional POTS service.

Regards.
 
I think Talktalk *used* to sell telephony-only PSTN service, but I haven't seen it advertised for many years. You'll have to ask them whether it's still possible to take such a product, but they may well refuse.

It's also unclear at this stage how SOTAP and LLU interact. LLU is just a copper pair, and is terminated on the equipment that the provider has in the exchange (Talktalk in this case). If it were a voice-only line, the only reason Talktalk would want to migrate it to SOTAP is if they were decommissioning their MSANs. This will eventually happen, but probably not until exchange closures start to take place, by which point SOTAP will need to be phased out too.

But this is all invisible to the end-user. They just have to have a analogue telephony-only line; how it's provisioned behind the scenes is not something they can control.

It's quite possible you probably missed the boat here. You were able to order an analogue PSTN-only line up until 5 Sep 2023.

But I don't see why you should worry too much. BT will still sell you a voice-only line, it's just provisioned as digital voice with a router. Your disabled auntie clearly qualifies as "vulnerable" so they are required to supply some power backup.

Equally, if it currently from Talktalk then Talktalk will continue to supply the analogue service for the time being. At some point in the future, when they decide to decommission their MSANs, they will migrate your auntie to digital voice, and will have to make the same provisions.
 
I think Talktalk *used* to sell telephony-only PSTN service, but I haven't seen it advertised for many years.
Shell Energy is about to transfer their customers over to the TalkTalk brand following the sale. Assuming you're not too late to join Shell now, they still have analogue landline only if you call up for it.

An elderly family member qualified for the social tariff and got a landline only for a good price out of them just a couple of months back. We specifically pointed them to Shell rather than BT as they didn't want to go down the digital voice route.
 
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Shell Energy is about to transfer their customers over to the TalkTalk brand following the sale. Assuming you're not too late to join Shell now, they still have analogue landline only if you call up for it.
I believe Shell Energy uses Talktalk equipment behind the scenes, so it's possible they will still sell you an analogue voice-only service. In principle Talktalk could too.
 
You should check with TalkTalk or Shell Energy to see if they still offer analogue voice-only services.
 
as I understand it, SOTAP for analogue is basically a bodged version of LLU designed for BT Wholesale. Any ISP that currently offers phone service over LLU (using its own equipment) is not affected by the WLR stop sell and isn't tied to BT's self imposed 2025 deadline for its own PSTN.

So TalkTalk can carry on doing what they're doing for now. Whether they would want to sell a landline only service to a particular customer is their decision and nothing to do with BT.

I'd expect TalkTalk and the other big LLU firms to downsize to one MSAN per exchange and use that to cover any residual POTS only services. Not as big of a saving as BT's ability to decommission entire rooms of even more ancient kit, however.

The question of whether you could get TalkTalk to do SOTAP for analogue is a solid no. The Openreach presentation that came out last year states that it was limited to lines that only have WLR (Openreach's POTS service, resold by BT/EE/Plusnet and a few smaller providers) and no broadband service. TalkTalk did not use WLR and generally no one can order new WLR services anyway.

Ditto for your own line too. This product is a stopgap for people or facilities that absolutely can't be put onto a digital voice product at this stage, not just vulnerable customers but things like lift phones and legacy modem users. It isn't for people who "prefer" POTS - you're still going to be told to upgrade to digital voice or go broadband only.
 
I think the one gap in all of the above is that it assumes the local exchange remains open. For a number of smaller and mid sized exchanges are earmarked for closure mainly because the property can be sold off for redevelopment releasing ££ and the FTTP goes to a bigger nearby exchange.

Whilst exchange closures won't happen overnight I would expect some exchanges to close before SOTAP ceases to be a thing, so I suspect that the relatively small but non-zero footprint of equipment needed to drive SOTAP and BT WLR will need options to be accommodated in street cabinets. Whether there would be the same option for MSANs from other LLU providers or they would want to be bothered with such a service offering is another question.
 
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I doubt the rural sheds have that much value, though. City centre properties (where not needed to host the Openreach headend, CP point of presence equipment and other modern gubbins) are a juicier target, but AFAIK none of this is happening before 2025 anyway.

SOTAP and continued use of LLU are low effort (low cost) solutions - and remember that if a user can get FTTC/FTTP then a digital voice solution is going to be the preferred upgrade route anyway. I can't see there being much appetite to trying to stick more active equipment in cabs, especially in FTTP-only areas where they won't have the fibre/power available.

I suppose one question is whether Openreach's FTTC DSLAMs are voice capable and it's just not used, or whether it'd need new hardware
 
Openreach already sold off their exchanges. They won't gain from any redevelopment, but they'll want to stop paying the leases.

It's highly unlikely that SOTAP-from-cabinet will ever be a thing. 85% of the country will have FTTP by end of 2026, almost all by 2030. FTTC will fade away naturally and then cabinets will be decommissioned, not upgraded.

The numbers of users on SOTAP will decline too, for obvious reasons. For the tiny number that remain in 10-15 years time, home visits can be made to provide one-to-one assistance with technology swaps, phone extension wiring, alarm pendants etc.
 
LLU Voice only does exist, I work for a TalkTalk Business Partner and it's a product available to us.

Now whether TalkTalk Residential will let you order it is a different matter, depends if the option exists in Trio, it should but is it an efficient use of a TalkTalk MSAN, as it still takes up a data connection in the Exchange even if it's not in use.

TalkTalk uses Sonus equipment to convert the calls to IP at the exchange.
Is it compatible with pendant alarms etc, no idea, I do not have any residential customers.
 
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