vivweb01blog

  A lot of concern has been expressed about this topic recently, particularly by vulnerable older customers who don’t have mobiles or a broadband connection, and still depend on traditional landlines exclusively for their contacts with the outside world. Not surprisingly, much of this has been driven by announcements in the press and online to the effect that ‘BT will be shutting down the copper cable phone network in your area by the end of 2025’. What does this actually mean ? Before we look at this question, first of all a bit of background knowledge about how our phone system, and more recently our broadband internet communications, work. The old traditional phone network originally installed in the early 20 th century was (and still is in some areas) based on copper cabling between telephone exchanges, and from the nearest exchange to the consumer’s premises. You can still see the familiar telephone poles and wires strung out between them in some areas. As technology ...

  Editor's note: See update at the end of the main article for news on the new UK.GOV plans for recycling collections.... ---------------------------- As one of the more incisive questions of our age, "When is Bins ?" definitely deserves some attention…and hopefully a reliable and effective solution for those afflicted by recent changes (i.e. most of us!). In days of old, life was much simpler when it came to getting our rubbish collected…. The majority of households had just one dustbin. We put it out for the dustmen (as we affectionately referred to them in those balmy 'pre-pc' days) on the same day each week, and with a bit of luck it got emptied sometime on that day.  Life is much more complicated nowadays when it comes to dealing with our domestic waste. The advent of recycling and climate change awareness, which admittedly was necessary, given our profligacy with the earth’s non-renewable resources over the last 100 years, came in the late 1990s, and n...