Heard Back from Age UK

Remember to share anywhere you can, one of our supporters shared via a Renault forum, so goes to show that anywhere helps! Even if you have shared, please make sure to share again.

So, Age UK came back today thanking me for my concerns, they have said they will look at this petition to give input if they can, but they are busy people which is understandable.

To be fair, out of all the people I have contacted, they show they care enough to come back to us, so I have offered my services to help support them if they need it, They said they are meeting with Ofcom, so I have given them a shed load of queries you can read below (if you are interested), most importantly, the advice I gave was that Ofcom could not actually answer these questions as half the problem with this change is that no one knows.

Anyway REMEMBER TO SHARE, and below is what I have inputted to Age UK so far

From me to Age UK

For your meeting with Ofcom, If I were you I would specifically query the following, if you need anything clarifying or need any help, feel free to get in touch.
Also, when you meet with them, I would recommend taking a telecoms expert, as while they may answer your questions a lot of these questions (in fact all of them) are not possible to answer.

1. What are BTs long term plans with ADSL, we understand that this can be powered during an outage by only powering the router and analogue gateway plus whatever devices we need to connect to the line, but what are their long term plans in both Urban Areas, Rural Areas and New build premises (Initially they will state BT has no intention of turning off ADSL, but that is not strictly true, and I don't believe BT have an intention of delivering new copper cables for new build locations).

2. For premises with FTTC or FTTP, how long will the cabinets retain power. We cannot see any definitive information, but from looking online we can see that rural premises who have made the switch to Fibre services have reported that even though they have a generator, their broadband service is not working in a power cut, but they point out it used to work when on ADSL. (if they state a number of hours, this is effectively a lie, so a cabinet feeds up to 400 premises, if every individual powers their equipment for longer than 1 hour, that will reduce any effective time you can put in place on the same cabinet).

3. Concerning the Emergency Services Network Changeover from Airwave to EE, how long will the EE masts be powered in the event of a power cut, will the GSM aspect benefit from this continuity as we understand that the Emergency services are switching to 4G. In the event of an outage, will normal communication operate over this network, or will this be limited to Emergency services use only? (this one you may need to raise with the Home Office, I am still waiting for a response from them so happy to share when I get one)

4. Given previous issues with service providers and 'footing the bill' for additional costs to enhance broadband, can we ask why you are following an approach where service providers are expected to pay for the additional equipment for vulnerable individuals, as this seldom gets put into place effectively, there is then a retrospective USO and bursary from the government to cover the costs. Do you not think this should be approached more pro-actively?

5. Given the issues with VoIP on ADSL far from the exchange, specifically packet loss, do you intend to review Satellite broadband again given recent changes. While the latency is high, it would be expected to work better than ADSL far from the Exchange as the data is more stable, are you able to confirm this?

6. Given the nature change of the services, we are aware that the NCSC has not looked into the cyber security issues that will be prevalent going forward, specifically call listening services and the increased ability to commit toll fraud against residential premises, what protection will be put in place around this area for vulnerable individuals, including Liability for cost of fraud?

7. Concerning access to emergency services during a power outage, a lot of your guidance is on the principal that a mobile or similar mobile connection can be used as a back up, but the rules around access to emergency services and "1 hour" apply to mobile providers as well, can you confirm how having a GSM enabled device would provide continuity longer than 1 hour where we cannot identify which masts have a 1 hour supply and which masts have a longer supply?

8. Do you think it is appropriate in a scenario where the service providers identify vulnerable individuals AND service providers foot the cost for additional power requirements that no specific question sets for identifying vulnerable individuals have been laid out?

9. Concerning cost for services, currently a PSTN service line rental price would range between £10 and £15, can you clarify the expected cost going forward for a premises that does not have broadband for
a. Copper Line, ADSL, Voice Access
b. Fibre Line, FTTC, Voice Access
c. Fibre Line, FTTP, FVA
d. Satellite Broadband, Voice Access

10. Given that a lot of voice services will utilise the same data allowance as the broadband, can we clarify why consumers are expected to pay for the call twice where they have a data allowance?
a. They will pay a per minute usage per today's infrastructure
b. If they have a data allowance, they will be required to pay for the upload and download usage on the broadband line for a voice call, the codec will define the bandwidth, there are 100 or so providers, not all of them are using appropriate compression, we estimate that this would be 1GB of data per 500 minutes of talk time on a 128kbps codec. This may result in an increased cost for calls to residential consumers.