Mobile technology is taking over, which is not all bad news. However what happens when the systems goes down, like they did follow the 7/7 attack?
Following the horrendous tube fire at Kings Cross tube station in the 80’s the lack of communication from the platform for emergency services was pointed out That has still not been rectified. There is still no communication from most tube platforms for mobile phones & the emergency services are moving over to a very old, out of date mobile phone service, which should have gone live a couple of years ago, but has still not & which will have no resilience to power outages & in some areas of the UK no or poor signal coverage.
During one flood scenario exercise on Norfolks coast. Raynet, the amateur radio emergency network, were asked to not partake. To see what the consequences were. That, they discovered, left one village that often floods with no police radio or mobile phone coverage & one telephone that would flood, even in low water levels. So no contact with base unless it was via a courier service.
The loss of landlines could be serious, although, I suspect, the current wire system will be maintained for internet coverage.
I meant more that it’s a nefarious plan to get people to buy not only a mobile but to get a new mobile contract, and BT’s EE are the UK’s largest provider.
Well. Apart from suggesting you come to terms with things and buy lots of balls of string and cups at each end to stretch between your house and your friends for when your landline goes dead, you could plug a modem into the appropriate ADSLMODEM socket and easily get wifi that way, if you wanted it, which you probably don’t.
The issue is many of the people who make decisions do not understand the subject that they are responsible for.
Would you employ a chef or an IT specialist to oversee your companies IT? Yet no company I know employs anyone with communication knowledge to oversee it’s communication choices. The same with government. Even the consultants normally know nothing.
The radio network at one of my local hospitals is the responsibility of a Doctor!! Several radio amateurs are employed by the trust. But they put a Doctor in charge & then they do not understand why someone googling the hospital found them listed on a radio scanning
website.The Doctor even claimed, “it’s a private radio system, we are encoded to stop people listening.” Even someone at Craplins (Maplins,) once tried to tell me the same thing, when I used their “private” frequency on my radio & they were using licence free PMR 446!!
The radio used at the hospital are on a Light Simple licence from Ofcom. So it is a set of frequencies that anyone with £30 for 3 years can use. Locally at that time, club doormen, a garden centre, a swimming pool & Tesco’s used exactly the same frequency.
The radio are not encoded they use something called CTCSS. This simply means the radios only hear each other & not any other traffic on the frequency. And the signal is, or was at that time, FM & in the open.
I also contacted my local Education Authority when I heard a school using a pupils full name & describing an incident over Light Simple radio. The Education Authority had no protocols in place & no one with any knowledge as a point of contact. I knew a radio amateur in their IT department & with his help, they now have policies & someone over seeing 2 way radios in schools.
ST, as you are posting on here I assume that you have WiFi, or in some way connected to t’internet.
Going by the fact that you mentioned that you have a router next to your computer, isn’t that plugged in to a socket like the one on the photo above?
Yes, so in other words, ST, you are connected via a telephone line, just like my mother in law.
As Dex says, it’s obviously working and I have no doubt that it will continue to work for years yet.
Just bear in mind that the government comes up with all sort of wonderful ideas, but they usually fail to plan ahead properly, so these warnings of the end of telephone lines may never happen even in our life times!
