Hmm - well, that sucks.
Yes PSTN switch-off only affects the telephone service, broadband will still work. VoIP should work well as it uses tiny amounts of bandwidth
I get the impression that BT are hoping that people will pay to go to fibre, which will save them the money it would cost them to move everyone over to fibre - which is what they have decided they want to do.
I would love to go over to fibre, and have enquired about that several times. I have been quoted about £10,000 to do it. So no, not an option for me.
Do you have (m)any neigbours in the same position? If so you could look in to a community fibre partnership
We’re on a small rural exchange and we were going to wait a very long time for fibre to reach us as part of the national rollout, if it ever got here at all so we set up a community project. As part of that, the government provided vouchers worth £1500 for residential premises and £3500 for an address with a registered business. This was topped up by Kent County Council to the tune of £1000 per address so we ended up getting fibre installed at no cost to us. It takes a bit of organising and chasing people up but it was very worthwhile in the end.
Thinking about it, the others don’t need to be neighbours per se, just as long as they are served by the same exchange. Our project started small (a couple of dozen premises) but ended up covering most of the outskirts of the village so some 400+ premises in total.
I have tried talking to my provider (LCN), who basically don’t seem able to tell me much. Can’t even tell me how much it will cost to connect to fibre.
Are LCN an Internet service provider? I’ve never heard of them but a Google search says they look more like a hosting company. Either way, they’re probably not in a position to tell you what it would cost to get fibre to you, that would be down to Openreach or one of the altnets who install their own fibre.
We don’t have many neighbours - nearest is about a mile away.
It is really frustrating trying to get information. I have been on Openreach site - I have yest to find any way to talk to a person. They have a chatbot thing that offers a very limited list of options - not so much a chatbot, more a menu of FAQs, none of which seem to be relevant.
I have looked on their availability page. It says that Ultrafast is not available (no surprise there), or there is standard broadband, up to 24Mbps (which is what we have, which actually gives up to 2Mbps) or Superfast Fibre, which gives up to 0-1 Mbps. Um - what would be the point of that??
If everybody on your exchange is in a similar position you may still be able to get a viable community partnership going. We were lucky that the local parish councillor was well onboard with the idea but it still took a lot of legwork to get there by a motivated group of volunteers including yours truly
Sorry, my mistake - my Beachcomber domain is with them. I should have said XLN is my provider. Not a very helpful bunch at the best of times, though.
Why wouldn’t VOIP work it, guessing people said the same about Telex machines 
VOIP normally only uses 64k.
I expect it will work so long as no-one is streaming anything or using mobile calling over WiFi. TBH I’m not sure. I might test it.
As I said in my post earlier, I have BT Smarthub 2 … I changed to BT’s ‘Digital Voice’ last year, this is the BT brand name for VoIP.
It works just fine, the SQ is better, & using the phone while streaming or whatever up or down link, is unaffected.
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Useful thread @Beachcomber
Recognise the basis for switching off PSTN - old system and expensive to maintain in exchanges.
Solution problematic for some, which includes here.
FTTC is good and reliable (via BT) substituted BT HH4 for Draytek, wired ethernet and wired Ubiquiti waps.
Mobiles - network coverage from all providers realistically non existent - unless hanging out the window! Wi-fi calling - posted previously on another thread, unreliable at least with O2, outgoing calls drop and incoming don’t ring. Text messages - couriers not received; bank verification texts though seem to work, as well as google verification ones.
Until 3g boostboxes were discontinued, mobile connection was fine within area of box coverage - not really whole house, but including reliable text.
Landline has six phones, to provide audible ringing thru’ house.
Alarm system has a dialler, again dependent on copper connection.
Appreciate that for many, perhaps the majority, voip or mobiles suffice.
IIUC there is a licensing issue with 5g boostboxes which O2 and Vodafone originally supplied (charged) some ten years ago. An updated boostbox would be a great solution; another case of going backwards.
For a few it is a real issue, as @trickydickie has commented.
Appreciate some have posted helpful information, but none appear to be a simple solution.
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OK, thanks, sounds interesting. What is your broadband speed?
I get 74/19 on both Ooka & the BT app testers
Wow! 2/1 here.
