Time to nationalize BT (British Telecom)

First there was just the land line

Many years ago, before mobile phones, one of my favourite uncles died of a heart attack. He was very unlucky, as it was one of those rare occasions when the local phone exchange was down. I can’t imagine what my aunt and some of his family and friends went through as they drove around the neighbourhood looking for a working phone.

At least in those days we had public phone boxes dotted around the towns and countryside. As you probably know, speed is critical for heart attacks. Back then we had our own land lines (most of us), emergency phones on motorways (what’s happening to them?) and call boxes and pay phones in villages, towns and cities. If your phone was down, you could go to the village or a neighbour. If the exchange was down, you had to go to the next town over. If you needed a phone when you broke down anywhere in between, you’d be lucky.

Then the mobile phone

Then mobile phones came along. For those who could afford them and who lived or travelled where there was coverage, they were a huge improvement (even if they were the size of a brick in the early days). If the cell tower was down, you’d have to fall back on a land line — your neighbour’s mobile phone line was likely to be down too.

But some people abandoned land lines, not wanting to pay for both, so land lines brought less profit for phone companies. Phone boxes and pay phones, which had already been used less as more people got land lines, started to disappear, so those without mobile phones were worse off. Coverage by mobile phones is still less than the area covered by land lines.

Some years ago I was living in a very rural area with very poor mobile phone connection (a very cheap temporary second home so I could be nearer my dying sister). I needed to be able to rely on the land line to keep in contact with her. The bank decided that to do internet banking, you needed to be able to receive texts with a code. This made keeping up with my finances while away from home very difficult.

After mobile phones came wi-fi

There was a period when connection to the internet was made by dialing into computers with a land line using a modem — I was on CompuServe for years and BT made a fortune off me — but then wi-fi came along.

A few years ago I moved to my current address. I had ordered a land line and wi-fi to be connected by BT before I moved in, but when I checked the day before I was due to move in, it had not. When I contacted them, they said it was because there was no land line to the address (total rubbish, there was a phone socket in the house). They had not bothered to contact me at my old address/phone, which they had, just unilaterally cancelled the order. As by now I relied on the internet for my work, I had to move into a hotel for 2 weeks until they connected me — and they never refunded me for that. A great start to my new home — not.

Not long later, the quality of the internet went downhill. It was so slow that it was literally taking me all day to do a day’s (online) work and weekends to catch up. I had no time for anything else, including getting organized in my new home (I had downsized considerably, and stuff was everywhere). A BT engineer visit did not fix it. Eventually I had to escalate it to the top and it took 6 months of weekly engineer visits to cure it. Apparently, the engineers were contractors, and some were not very good at noting what they had done, so there was a lot of repeated useless work.

I kept a pay-as-you go phone well topped up with credit to use for emergencies. Then one day I was out in the car and it broke down. The phone refused to connect. I had to flag somebody down and borrow their phone to call for help. Fortunately, traffic from the main road had been redirected onto my country road that night, so I did not have to wait long. Apparently if you do not use a pay-as-you go phone as often as they want, then even if you are well in credit, they disconnect you.

During pandemic lockdowns, I have relied a good deal on being able to order necessities online or by phone. While I am not in the highest risk category, there are reasons why having COVID would be particularly difficult for me. For others it has been literally a lifesaver.

So, we rely on being connected for a lot of things, from saving our lives, to keeping us safe from COVID to the convenience (for some, necessity) of online banking and shopping. And the backbone underpinning it all for those outside of cities and other well-connected areas is the landline.

Whichever type of connection we have, it is run by a company that is in it for profit first, not for customer service.

I am one of the fortunate ones. I can afford wi-fi, a mobile phone and a landline. I can drive a car. As I get older and retire that may no longer be the case.

With pandemics perhaps changing our way of life for the foreseeable future with increased working from home and online shopping, now is not the time to put all our communications eggs into fewer and fewer baskets. Outages will affect more and more people each time. Cyber attacks are also a risk, particularly by a hostile or competitor nation.

As a matter of national security we need to be able to communicate reliably at all times, and particularly in any emergency.

Now they are doing away with the land line

So, imagine my horror on reading this story: Internet revamp for the humble landline. “The technology that currently powers landline telephones is to be switched off in 2025”. They say it is because of cost. Those with accessibility needs will have to be given alternatives in case of power cuts.

Home burglar alarms and security systems, public traffic lights, cash machines, railway signals and motorway signs will all have to be switched to fully digital alternatives. Imagine what fun hackers could have with some of those. True, more and more people are abandoning land lines these days, but can everyone? And what about the cost to those who have to do something to switch? What about those who are too old to learn new technology? What about the disabled who use land-line based technology? The change involves the most risk for those who are already the most disadvantaged.

And selling off British Telecom

BT is not popular — after all, it has been privatized a long time. Turning it back into a company that puts service first would be a major step forward.

The Labour Government gave up its Special Share giving it the power to block a takeover of the company in 1997. A six-month moratorium placed on the telecom’s largest shareholder expired on December 11. It may not be long before BT is owned by yet another foreign owner keen to cut costs and increase profits. What chance of expanding coverage to 100% then?

Our current economic policies reward companies that merge and cut costs, and put profits before their staff or customers. Our essential infrastructure should not be in the hands of such companies. It is time to (re-)nationalize them, starting with BT.