Telephony services have relied on the use of copper wire pairs for the last 150 years. In that time service providers have made a considerable investment in installing and maintaining the copper-based infrastructure that the public switched telephone network (PSTN) relied on.
But the venerable PSTN is reaching the end of its life. Its old technology is increasingly difficult to maintain and many customers are using alternative methods of communications.

Although those copper pairs now also provide broadband services as well as telephony, the ultimate plan is to also retire and remove the copper infrastructure. BT in the UK estimates they can recover an estimated 200,000 tonnes of copper through the 2030s.

The ultimate aim of service provides is to move customers to fibre to the premises with telephony using voice over IP (VoIP) techniques.

The European Union (EU) has a target of switching off copper-based services entirely by 2030 while in the UK, the incumbent operator BT has the aim of moving its PSTN users to VoIP services by 2027. However, many of those BT customers will be migrated to VoIP over the copper pairs that still provide Internet access.

There are many challenges for service providers in achieving their aims. A recent report revealed that just ten countries in the EU were expected to meet the 2030 deadline. For example, Belgium predicted it would migrate 80% of customers to an all-fibre service by 2034 and reach 100% by 2040.

The main hurdle to total migration is not technical but human. Customers need to be prepared for the required changes to how they access a service and convinced by the benefits that can ensue from an all-digital environment. But there are also technical issues: alarm services may not work over a digital connection and VoIP telephony requires battery backup to retain service provision when mains supply fails.

Apart for residential customers, businesses also need to be prepared. It has been reported that less than 26% of businesses in the UK have a plan in place for the switch-off of analogue telephony and less than one in ten are aware of the 2027 deadline.

Education and preparation are therefore key to a successful transition to an all-fibre future.
PTT online courses include those covering “Telephony and data services”, “Introduction to telephony”, and “Voice over IP”.

When we use our mobile phone we may check whether its battery needs a charge but it’s unlikely we consider the power requirements of the site that provides the mobile service. But for operators, power consumption of their equipment has a significant financial impact. With a looming climate crisis, there is also greater emphasis on reducing the environmental impact of providing a service.
The UK telecoms provider BT has recently taken steps to go green at one of its rural cell sites. Solar panels and a wind turbine provide renewable energy and, on dark and windless days, a generator using green fuel kicks in once the battery runs dry. Vodafone has also removed the need to connect one of its cell sites in Wales to the power grid by using locally produced renewable energy.
Hrvatski Telekom in Croatia has gone one green step further by installing a wooden cell tower. The 40 metre tower is made of processed durable, fire-resistant wood. This recyclable material has a much smaller carbon footprint than steel and has a smaller aesthetic impact on a rural landscape.
You and your colleagues can also go green by studying PTT online courses instead of travelling to a classroom-based training site. The PTT catalogue includes a wide range of courses covering the technologies that underpin telecommunications services.

Mobile service providers face the challenge of providing sufficient capacity for high numbers of users in busy urban areas. Mobile users compete for access to the shared bandwidth of the radio signal that provides service coverage in an area. The greater the number of simultaneous users in a cell, the lower the online speeds available to each.

One solution is to provide extra, smaller cells in areas where large numbers of people congregate – shopping centres, sports arenas, and busy high streets, for example. Since the coverage area of these cells will not stretch further than a few hundred metres, their miniature mobile antennae can be installed relatively low down on street furniture such as lamp posts or even redundant phone kiosks.

The UK mobile operator EE has recently installed several thousand small cells in towns and cities around the UK. Busy tourist spots in rural areas can also benefit from small cell deployment. The EE small cells use either 4G or 5G technology with download speeds of 300 Mbit/s or 600Mbit/s respectively – high enough to satisfy even the most demanding of users.

These EE sites operate at radio frequencies (RF) of 1800 MHz, 2.5 GHz or 3.5 GHz. But operating at even higher frequencies could provide yet faster download speeds. Vodafone has recently carried trials of 5G cells operating at radio frequencies of tens of gigahertz (GHz) in the so-called mmWave band. These trials provided download speeds of 4 Gbit/s at a distance of 100 metres from the cells’ antennae and 2.4 Gbit/s 400 metres away.

The UK regulator Ofcom is planning an auction of mmWave frequencies for mobile operators. So, city users could have access to commercial mmWave services in the near future.

PTT offers online courses covering mobile technologies and services including an Introduction to mobile systems, 4G and 5G radio access networks, and Advanced mobile systems.