Copper "Switch-Off"

Well after the storm at the start of the year, we've loads of copper lines down. Obviously no one is using them as they would have been fixed long ago!
I wish they would come and remove them….

I’d also just point out that the term ‘copper switch-off’ means different things to different telcos, commentators and even regulators.

In some countries, they’re calling the move from PSTN/ISDN to IP-based technology 'the shutdown of the PSTN,' which is both accurate and not, depending on how you look at it.

If we’re just talking about the PSTN/ISDN switchover, that is simply replacing TDM (Time Division Multiplexing)-based telephone switches (the digital ones that have run the traditional phone network since the ‘80s) with VoIP and soft switches - then as far as I’m aware, that’s pretty much done. What Eir and other operators have been doing for years has been moving people to VoBB (voice over broadband) while pruning the old exchanges down to smaller size, and then replacing what's left of them them with a Nokia MSAN platform which is entirely IP based and is basically "POTS emulation". It can still deliver POTS service, but it's just coming from a few racks of IP gear, not a big old 1980s telephone exchange that looks like a mainframe computer of the era. That's why you're getting all those warnings about alarm systems not liking phone lines etc.

For the most part, the PSTN network is just obsolete to end users as a concept - whether it's TDM based or IP based doesn't really matter to most people, and is just naturally shrinking and disappearing anyway. Most residential users don't bother with landline numbers at all or are very content with just plugging a phone into the back of their broadband router, and businesses have largely moved to IP-based technologies like hosted PBX etc or SIP trunks that have replaced ISDN.

But copper lines still carrying IP services (like VDSL i.e. FTTC fibre to the cabinet) are likely to hang around a bit longer yet, until full fibre to the home/premises (FTTH/P) is more widely rolled out. There are inevitably a % of premises that are going to take longer to connect to FTTH due to issues with direct buried cables and so on. Some of those households may also just abandon copper anyway and move to 5G+ while waiting for FTTH to arrive, as twisted pair copper technologies are increasingly inferior to mobile broadband.

Ireland also has also got an issue with lower density housing, which means we'll always be slower than places with high density and apartment dwelling. We also have a bigger % of urban homes on CATV networks than most of Europe, so some of those legacy copper networks are actually capable of providing nearly fibre like services anyway. You'll see similar in Belgium for example. It's not reasonable to compare CATV and POTS copper services.

You've also got a % of users who aren't going to move off VDSL unless and until they're incentivised or pushed to, as they'll be content with slower broadband and see no advantage in FTTH yet. Plenty of households that will just not really be that excited about it yet.

But, I think we're ending up talking about two parallel issues in the way this is being discussed in Europe. One is about fibre rollout, the other is about PSTN/ISDN closure. They're only partially related and I just regularly see the two being confused in commentary.