‘There are still millions for whom a landline is – literally – a lifeline’

• WITH scarcely any publicity and no public consultation, the government is stealthily switching off conventional fixed phone lines and transfering callers to internet-based technology (Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP), aiming to complete this by 2025.

Even if this is a technological advance (and a lot cheaper for phone companies) it embodies real danger. The new system needs both a router and a domestic electricity supply. So if there is a power cut it won’t work at all, even to contact emergency services.

In contrast conventional landlines take their power from telephone exchanges and keep working even if everything else electrical has failed.

Even if many people already think conventional phones are irrelevant and just use a mobile, there are still millions for whom a landline is – literally – a lifeline; but of course they don’t count in a profit-driven system aiming to provide the lowest-quality service for the highest price.

And BT, still by far the biggest UK telecoms supplier, has successfully lobbied Ofcom to let it off the hook by removing its duty to provide a resilient phone service that will always work in an emergency, claiming that there are too few people who don’t have mobile access to make it commercially worthwhile.

Please note that there’s no way to opt out. When your exchange goes VoIP that’s it.

DON KELLER, N15