Telephone Switchover postponed INDEFINITELY.

[weematt]

I received an email from VM yesterday informing me that the telephone switchover from landline to fibre has been postponed indefinitely.

Can anyone here tell me why?

[caddyshak]

There is no reason given but the theory is that they will wait until your contract is up so they don't lose the £19.50 a month landline charge if like me you decide not to continue with a landline as we never use it

[weematt]

Thanks. I was imagining a great 'landline replacement failure' scandal.

[Paul_DN]

Hi weematt,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome, we don't have any further information other than it has been put on hold, once we have any further information, our customers will be advised.

Regards

Paul.

[Tudor]

Government instruction, all PSTN providers have had to hold their updates. I believe it’s due to problems with elderly people and their alarms.

[weematt]

Thanks for the information. If it is a problem with safety critical alarms then it will apply to any such person with such an alarm, not just the elderly. This should have been addressed as a key issue before starting the disconnection programme.

[Arissa_H]

Hi Weematt 👋🏼.

Thank you for coming back to us. 

I understand your frustration and it does apply to people with critical alarms/elderly. However regarding your delayed telephone switchover, you shall get an email/text to confirm when it will be going ahead. 

[weematt]

I am not frustrated by the delay. I am annoyed that such a rollout is commenced before resolution of a safety issue. It is not just a VM issue, it applies to all PSTN providers and they either incredibly did not consider this issue or decided to roll out the programme anyway.

[Arissa_H]

I am really sorry for the inconvenience caused we will be contacting customers to let them know when we can do the switchover.  

[asim18]

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@weematt wrote:

I am not frustrated by the delay. I am annoyed that such a rollout is commenced before resolution of a safety issue. It is not just a VM issue, it applies to all PSTN providers and they either incredibly did not consider this issue or decided to roll out the programme anyway.

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Personally, I absolutely agree with you.

If I was in charge of this rollout, the first thing I'd have done is to carefully log the uptime and reliability of people's internet connections before forcing companies to get rid of people's PSTN lifelines. If the reliability wasn't as good/as better than their old PSTN line I would NEVER have allowed this "idea" to go ahead.

Unfortunately from the sound of things, it seems as if people have been fatally affected by this pointless charade before the people in charge realised that highly modulated digital internet connections are nowhere near as reliable as the analogue PSTN.

It's a bit like the LTN's in cities. They have blocked access to thousands of roads in the UK. Roads which have been open for hundereds of years now have trees planted across them, blocking emergency services and causing delays of up to 10 minutes for emergency services to be able to reach desperate callers. This has been causing premature deaths, undue destruction to property, and allowing criminals to flee, because every second counts as emergency services are forced to take forced detours of up to 3 miles to reach callers.

The motivation behind these "ideas" is unknown to me. Whether it is due to malice or ignorance remains unsubstantiated. However the effect of these "ideas" on innocent people is clearly evident.