How many people still have a landline here?

[Diver Fred]

I'm trying to make sense of this but I'm struggling, please help me.

These alternative suppliers who cherry pick? Where in the UK can I enjoy a BT free service from an alternative supplier???

Home Village - new company 'Gigaclear' providing FTTP. Come in and put some new ducts and footway boxes in. Rest of the village they use, as they are allowed to, the OpenReach ducts, Footway and Roadway boxes, and the OR poles. Their basic provision is FTTP Data (BroadBand) with a (basic) telephony service on top. The GigaClear 'Point of Presence*' is in the next village, a grey box connected to GigaClear's own SDH network. They have provided their own ducts between the 2 villages.
* This is where the data rate is changed from network rates to customer rates.
Inlaws village similar but they have a in-home monitoring system (house alarm, OAP monitor and Smoke/fire alarm). The incoming service provider cannot support the monitoring system even though the monitoring system has been upgraded to work with VOIP systems.

Because the incoming company cannot support the monitoring service - therefore in my book they are 'Cherry Picking' - taking the easy to service customers but anything that is a little bit different or difficult they leave to BT.

Our local town the OpenReach exchange Building (Note - Not BT building anymore) has at least 3 companies equipment installed in it and those service providers use the OpenReach copper cables, along with customers from BT, TalkTalk, NTL. Again expect these companies to provide basic telephony and a BroadBand service but very few can support additional functionality. Those service providers are not 'Wholesale' customers of BT reselling a service to the general public customers.

'BT free' service - do you mean :- 1) a service not provided by BT or 2) a service from BT but Free of Charge?
In the first case then for example the GigaClear provision in the home village is not provided by BT but does use OR poles from where GigaClear's fibre distribution point is attached. Similarly in the local town the users of TalkTalk and NTL do not use any BT kit but do use the OR external cable network.
In the second case, Wholesale customers who resell BT do use the BT network.

BTW - GigaClear charge £17 per month for Broadband + £3 per month for 'phone service for the first 18 months then their prices double or slightly more. Does also seem to be subject to the same annual price increase as Virgin Media and BT.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

The concept of Openreach NOT being BT is laughable.

They're exactly the same company, hiding behind two different logos.

 

[JP_]

Still got a landline. Nobody calls. Well, sometimes GP calls, and I miss it as I don't answer.

 

[blup]

Use the digital landline, useful to have a number if you don't want to give your mobile number out. Mainly receive cold calls. A surprising number of silent calls as well, like a cold callers revenge.

Blup

 

[JP_]

Use the digital landline, useful to have a number if you don't want to give your mobile number out. Mainly receive cold calls. A surprising number of silent calls as well, like a cold callers revenge.

Blup

Silent calls are bots seeing if anybody answers. If you speak, they know the line is used and then the sales calls come.

Best not to speak until spoken to if an unknown number!

 

[blup]

Silent calls are bots seeing if anybody answers. If you speak, they know the line is used and then the sales calls come.

Best not to speak until spoken to if an unknown number!

So no swearing either

Blup

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Silent calls are bots seeing if anybody answers. If you speak, they know the line is used and then the sales calls come.

Best not to speak until spoken to if an unknown number!

Even better, filter out all the calls, except from known caller numbers, so the phone doesn't ring at all.