BT has set 2025 for the End of Life for traditional voice services

Go read this article on the switch off PSTN and ISDN in 2025 which I beleive to mean the analogue phone network of which there were over 3 million as suggested in the article, so not insigificant numbers. A very sultry indeed looking Gavin Patterson.

A better read is maybe this, the original article which states more clearly that "As BT has set 2025 for the EOL for traditional voice services"

Now this raises the question (and it is a question I can't answer) around what do they going forward for those hard to reach places that currently only have a analogue service. Maybe one of the following 5 possible answers or something else

1. Over the next few years they will get some sort of digital service, however slow provided by improvements in technology that allows an IP technology to be used even at 128kbs which will allow voice calls on any line no matter how long and degraded.
2. The Universal Service Obligation expires and some rural areas are left without any fixed line service.
3. Don't worry be happy, fiber will get everywhere by then paid for by BDUK/Superfast Cymru depending on where you live
4.  Don't worry be happy, fiber will get everywhere and it is factored into BDUK costs
5. No one has asked or at least no one important enough, so shut up

Option 2 is a worry obviously.

Option 3 means that the tax payer has been paying for work OpenReach would have had to do over the next 10 years. Now clearly we don't want to wait 5 or more years for Openreach to solve the problem of rural connectivity, but given the speed(??) of progress in many rural reas over the last 3 years, its no unreasonable to think that in 2025 there will still be no improvement in many parts of rural wales.


I don't have a clue what the answer is, but I would like to see the question asked by a forward looking political type.