This letter appeared in today’s Guardian:
What needs to be spelled out to the politicians looking to consult people about digital ID is that you cannot have a universal digital anything until you have universal phone coverage (UK digital ID scheme to have limited use before next general election, minister says, 10 March). When the old copper phone lines are switched off, we will be cut off because no provider will invest in our area, and this is not untypical of large areas of Devon.
That means that any digital ID accessed by phone will not be available to us unless we go and park in a layby every day where we can get signal. Does Darren Jones, the prime minister’s chief secretary, even understand this point? We are not refuseniks. We just live near a hill, and so we won’t be able to do our car tax, get our medical records or anything else as things stand.
This is not a lifestyle choice either because we had a properly functioning analog TV signal as well as a landline when we moved here. We can’t give out our mobile number to anybody important because we know that the device will let us down, and we are paying the same as everyone else – have been for years.
Teresa Rodrigues
Crediton, Devon
This is a good argument against digital ID in itself and is also likely to work well in the public sphere. I welcome any blow against digital ID, and I sympathise with Ms Rodrigues, but I must acknowledge that there is a problem for libertarians here.
As the letter says, the UK’s old Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) landline phone network is in the process of being replaced. This link takes you to the government guidance page on “Moving landlines to digital technologies”. The government and the phone companies present this transition to “Digital Voice” as being un upgrade for which we should be grateful. It is not an upgrade for me and I am not grateful. Compared to some, I am not badly affected, but I have lost the convenient ability to dial six digits instead of eleven for a local number, and, more worryingly, Digital Effing Voice doesn’t work when there is a power cut, which we have fairly often. For those who live in rural areas, such as the writer of the above letter, it will be much worse. A friend of mine lives in Scotland, has very poor mobile signal at the best of times, and regularly experiences days-long power cuts due to snow. That’ll be fun when the landline doesn’t work. Next year’s papers will be full of stories about old people in isolated houses who died because they could not call for help in an emergency. This change is not being done for the benefit of the customers. It is being done because the “new digital technologies using the internet such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Digital Voice or All-IP telephony” cost less to run than the old technologies.
What to do? If I was a socialist or a big-state Conservative, I would immediately say that the old copper phone lines must be maintained despite the expense in order to protect the vulnerable and to keep the system working in the face of attack or disaster. As a minarchist, I might be able to say the same, but given that the actual socialists in power and the big-state Conservatives who preceded them have not taken that route, when I have no doubt that they would have been happy to trumpet that they were doing so, I would guess that the extra expense of maintaining the old system must be insupportable.
Or am I wrong?
“This change is not being done for the benefit of the customers. It is being done because the “new digital technologies using the internet such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Digital Voice or All-IP telephony” cost less to run than the old technologies.”
And they need the copper for HS2.
I have a fibre/digital telephone line and recently encountered one of its features.
Using the fibre/digital landline to call my bank, part way through the conversation the handset started beeping, and cut off the call. It then went into a software update mode for several minutes.
I had to re-call my bank using my mobile.
The irony is that having recently changed my BT account, I’d retained the digital voice bit, because I don’t like using my “smart” phone for making long phone calls, the “landline” handset being much easier to hold against my ear for long periods.
Why is it that most modern tech “advances” are anything but?
In the good old days (i.e., not very long ago), when we suffered a (not infrequent) power failure I would lift the phone, call the power company and find out how long we would be out. On at least one occasion I called to report that everything in the house was beeping frantically and according to my multimeter, whose probes I had shoved into a wall socket, we were getting 72 volts. The power rep’ replied in a businesslike tone “Okay, partial power at your address” which quite baffled me; I had no idea that was even possible, much less that the power industry would have a common buzzword for it.
Last time the power went out I lifted the phone to call the power company, and got nothing at all – no dial-tone, no static. Ah yes, the wonders of VOIP – the old days of the phone company having its own landlines and battery backups are gone. Now when the power is out, the servers are down and the phone is out too. How nice…