Everything seems to be changing to digital these days.
TV has now changed to digital with analogue TV ending in 2012.
Digital radio or DAB is available,
but analogue radio is still available as well.
Analogue music on vinyl and cassettes was replaced years ago
by digital CDs and then MP3 and other digital file formats.
But vinyl is making a bit of a comeback for some these days.
So it is clear that there is a general trend to migrate
to digital services and the same is happening with telephones.
BT have launched their Digital Voice service
and are busy migrating customers to this new service.
But why are BT changing their landlines from analogue to digital.
There are benefits to both us as the users, but also to BT.
Let's first of all look at the benefits to us
as the users of the new Digital Voice service.
Digital voice will offer improved quality.
When I was younger, I remember sometimes struggling to hear the caller
through the background noise and hiss on the line.
The noise or hiss could be caused by dodgy connections or water damage
or whatever to one of the many connections between the wires that connect you
to your local exchange.
Or it could even be a faulty
analogue handset at either your end or the called persons end.
Digital Voice will not suffer from these problems.
Your handset will convert your voice to ones and zeros,
which will be transmitted by your router or Smart Hub, along with
all the other data from your computers or tablets or other devices.
Digital voice
quality is often marketed as High Definition
to indicate that the quality is better than the old analogue phones.
BT can also offer innovative call features with their digital voice service
that would just not available on the old analogue voice network.
For example, BT
now provides a voicemail or answerphone service
with all digital voice lines at no extra charge.
This may not seem that innovative in the era of smartphones, where
we all just assume that our mobile phone will include a voicemail service.
However, a voicemail service
from BT with their landline service is a new capability.
I'm old enough to remember when we had to buy an answer phone unit
that was plugged into the landline.
When you got home,
you had to push a button to have all your messages played back to you.
The digital voice service will add new features
that it is impossible for an old fashioned answerphone to offer.
For example, the Digital Voice Voicemail Service can take a message
even if you are busy on another call.
An old fashioned analogue answer phone could never do that.
I have seen comments in online forums that you have to listen
to the dial tone to check if you have got messages.
That is not true.
If you get the free digital handset that BT are offering
to everybody who migrates to the digital voice service
this will display a green
answerphone symbol and even beep if there's a message waiting for you.
There are lots of other features like Caller Display, Call
Waiting, Conference Call, Call Diversion, Barring Nuisance Calls
that are all included in the Digital Voice service.
Many of these services were available with the old analogue telephone lines,
but one of the features of the digital voice service is that you can now control
the setup of these features from the MyBT website as well as from your phone.
Personally, I find the MyBT website much easier to use.
A totally new feature that Digital Voice offers
is the ability to make multiple calls at the same time.
So if you are making a work call in your home office,
then somebody else in the house can make a separate call to a friend.
Or if you are on a work call in your office
and there is an incoming call and you have a digital handset
in another room, then the other phone will ring
and another person can answer the call without interrupting your work call.
Digital Voice moves the old analogue
telephone service into the 21st century.
I'd just like to point out at this stage that I've not been paid any money by BT
to make this video.
I've worked in the telecoms industry for 20 years, but never for BT.
I know that the UK must migrate to Digital Voice to ensure that UK has a modern
digital voice service and infrastructure and that's why I've made this video.
One thing that I have not mentioned
so far is the big problem that does not have an easy solution.
If there is a power outage, then digital voice will not work
because the home router or Smart Hub has no power.
The one advantage of the old analogue voice service
was that it continued to work during a power outage.
My take on what is happening is that Ofcom knows that
the UK must move to the Digital Voice service.
But Ofcom also knows that some users
must still be able to make calls when there is a power outage.
There are ongoing discussions between Ofcom and the telecoms
operators, including BT, to try and resolve this issue.
I think it is really difficult, but I still think that
it is the right thing to do to migrate to digital voice.
I think it's also worth pointing out that there are also benefits for BT
in terms of efficiency and reduced costs.
The old analogue phone service uses a backbone network to carry your voice
from one part of the country to another part of the country.
When you make an analogue call, a temporary connection is made
across the backbone network for the duration of the phone call.
Reserving capacity on the backbone network for you to talk to the called person
and for the called person to talk to you at the same time.
Even if you're sitting there
and listening to the other person and saying nothing.
The network has reserved that capacity on its backbone
network for you for the entire duration of the call.
This is obviously expensive because backbone network
capacity is reserved even if it isn't being used.
It would obviously be much more efficient if the backbone network was only used
when you were talking.
The digital voice service converts your voice into a series of ones and zeros
and then puts these ones and zeros into packets of data.
It only does this when you are talking.
If you are not talking that there will be no packets of digital voice data,
so no capacity is used on the backbone network.
The internet is an IP network, which is a packet based network.
So the same technology that is used by the Internet
can be used as a backbone for a Digital Voice service.
This means that BT can migrate to a single IP network that will carry
both voice calls from your landline as well as the data from your broadband.
So BT will be able to reduce its costs
because of running a single backbone network for both voice and data.
It is also much more efficient to carry voice calls as packets of data, so less
capacity is required in the backbone network which means less cost.
Just quickly
returning to the problem of power outages that I mentioned earlier,
if Ofcom force BT to continue to provide analogue voice services
so that home phones will work during a power outage,
then BT could not migrate to an IP backbone
and would not be able to compete with other landline operators in the UK
because BT will have higher costs than other operators.
It would also handicap BT because the old analogue voice
service could not offer new innovative services like integrated
voice mail and multiple calls on the same line.
One of the things that Ofcom must do is ensure
that all operators are competing on a level playing field.
It therefore cannot disadvantage BT by insisting that BT continues to offer
analogue voice services simply to provide a phone service in a power outage.
As a final note, I think it is worth mentioning that
Digital Voice service is not fibre all the way to your house.
When you migrate to BT's Digital Voice service,
you are still using the same copper wires that connect your home
to the nearest BT Cabinet.
BT’s fibre
network normally extends to the local cabinet
and this is known as Fibre To The Cabinet or FTTC.
Moving to BT’s Digital Voice does not mean that BT
have extended the fibre network to your house.
This is known as Fibre To The Premises or FTTP.
If you check your broadband speed just before migration to Digital Voice
and just after migration to Digital Voice, you will find that it has not changed.
BT will eventually migrate everybody to fibre to the premises
and when they do this you will see a massive increase in broadband speed.
BT have started this migration, but it will take years
and it is going to cost a lot of money.
When you migrate to Digital Voice, BT are now sending voice as data
from your new digital handset mixed in with all your other data
from your computer, tablets and other devices all down your existing
broadband connection, which goes over the copper wires.
I hope that's helped to explain why BT are migrating you to Digital Voice.