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Digital switchover is overwhelming me

lonelyautie

My autistic brain is overwhelmed by the forced digital switchover. I'm crying right now because everything has gotten too much. I've had 3 years of relentless problems to solve and now my very access to the world is at risk.

We have an ancient hub from 2015 that doesn't have a phone socket, so we'll need a new one when the time comes. But BT doesn't accommodate autism, so the Hub will just come "whenever" they feel like sending it. And our flat already has an unreliable internet connection (copper wires) that I'm scared of fiddling with in case it permanently breaks (our living room phoneline stopped working years ago and now we rely on the hallway).

Secondly, Digital Voice doesn't work in a power cut. The whole point of having a landline is to keep myself safe and connected during power cuts or broken routers. So the telecoms industry is permanently making my future more precarious and dangerous and isolated. I can't afford to make calls on a mobile because I'm on PAYG and I need the tactile shape of a proper handset, not a thin mobile to my face. I'm semi verbal/L2 and can't spontaneously reach out for help to my neighbours in an emergency. I NEED the landline to work.

I know that I can beg for a Backup Power unit when the transition time comes but they'll gatekeep it or force me to pay, because that's how all accessibility needs work -- and that's also a functioning administrative task to do when I'm already chronically burned out from fixing life problems! I can't do more peopling, more phone calls, more delivery, morerelentless open tabs in my brain! I just can't!

The uncertainty and future demands is giving me a mental breakdown and I haven't even received the migration letter yet. Now I'm forced to spend a year living in relentless fear and worry for when the transition will happen to me.

For context, I'm currently suffering a Universal Credit migration that I spent a year living in fear of, and I can't handle anymore stress after 3 years of fixing administrative problems with involuntary debts, council persecution, NHS abuse, and the government's welfare bill. I am burned out and have been having chronic meltdowns for 2 years now.

I feel myself teetering on the brink of a major stress episode. I feel like I'm going to fall apart and shutdown/stop functioning/Big Meltdown/crisis team call any day now. I can't take anymore of this. Society shouldn't be making me do all these adult tasks, I wasn't designed for it. Life is too hard for me.

  • Here’s my experiance of it all 

    im the I hate change type of autistic nkt just because it’s strange but why fix what’s not broken

    analouge tv had better coverage

    satalite and cable tv are more stable than streaming

    crt TVs had a nicer picture across the board where as led TVs are only good for hd and 4k images 

    digital voice means no internet no phone no power no phone 

    also I hate that phone boxes are gone or done have phones in

    it feels like the world that I lived in for so many years is fading snd yes I still have over half my life left but for an autistic person or at least for me THIS autistic person so to speak what I know from the ages of being a toddler and by the time im in high school these are what o expect the world to be thats why this forum is good it’s likes  peice of that bygone age of 1990s and 2000s internet 

    I often get sad that shops or tech from my little autistic paradise are all gone or going or just not in wide use

    i love my ps5 but it’s sad to me that I can’t use it on a crt tv that little black or silver box in the corner of the room that I used to get so much joy out of is replaced by a cheap rectangle with no joy in it apart from what it can display 

    I hope my ramblings make sense im just a 1990s kind of person if it wasn’t made before 2010 im not interested as much snd I prefer things made between the 70s and the 90s

  • in reply to Lotus

    My wife, son and myself all had phones with EE, all were out of contract for years and were £32 each per month. I swapped them all to Talk Mobile, I went for a higher usage contract as we use a lot of data. it is £4 per month for 3 months and then £8 per month. For each contract I also received a £50 Amazon card . The £150 was quite useful. It is a two year contract, when you deduct the £50 and the reduced 3 months it made it £5.41 per month plus free data roaming abroad which EE charge for.

  • I sympathise - the situation is very unsettling.

    I cannot advise regarding the landline, but I do have a suggestion regarding a mobile phone for emergencies. There are large button ones which are more tactile & work on 2g for calls and texts - the TT brand is quite good and they start from around £20 on Amazon. You could sell your old mobile if you do not have funds to purchase a new one - CEX stores will usually buy them, or you can search online if you don't have a store near you. 

    You say you are on PAYG so cannot afford to make calls. If you buy a sim free phone (TT ones usually are) you can purchase an Asda mobile sim and pay £4 a month for unlimited calls & texts - no contract, you just purchase the bundle each month and they let you know by text when it ends.

    Hope you find a solution that helps lower your stress levels.

  • in reply to mp500

    We have frequent power cuts, not as many as we used too, but enough to keep things like landlines, gas hob and fire, so as we can keep warm in contact and have a hot drink and a meal, we last used this a few months ago after a big storm.

    If the problem with the wiring is in your building then I think it's BT who will have to sort this out rather than your ISP. We have BT as our ISP, everything has to go through thier wires anyway. They did give us a new connection from outside as part of the new thingie.

    Is there a local ASC group who could advocate on your behalf?

    I agree it is quite overwhelming, I dont' really understand it either, we've just had a new router etc thats supposed to be loads faster than the old one, I can't see any diference to be honest and it's big! I thought new technology was going to be smaller, this new routers twice the size of the old one so is the booster, or boosters, one of which has had to find a home on the kitchen work top and take up a whole plug socket to itself. The stupid bloke who came to set it up, plonked the thing right ibehind where I was cooking in my only prep space and couldn't get his head round the idea, that I need that space, I cook every day and it was likely to get splattered with veg peelings and random bits of food. A lot of the people who do this stuff are such numpties!

  • Its worth noting that the traditional telephone system (which by the way, is already /mostly/ digital), is based on a system called System X, which was designed in the 1970s and implemented in the 80s and 90s and then mostly left alone with minimal upgrades/changes since it worked so well (albeit expensively). The equipment in the telephone exchanges is now long past the end of its service life and BT/Openreach have been wanting rid of it for years. Unfortunately they haven't done a very good job of migrating people (or even notifying them of this) until now. 

    To put it bluntly, change is inevitable when it comes to such old technologies and will just have to be put up with. The good news is that 'Digital Voice' is based on a well established Voice Over IP system called 'SIP', which has been in use for many years, and is extremely reliable, when you have a decent internet connection, and everything talks to each other correctly. As far as I'm aware, DV has been very reliable so far.

    If your internet connection isn't very reliable, you really should try and speak to your ISP and bully them into sorting it. I know this is easier said than done, but it is the only way to fix problems.

    The fact that telephones work in a power cut is more of a convenient quirk of how they work, rather than a design feature. Modern mains supplies are so reliable that in most areas, you'd probably be more likely to have a telephone exchange/internet fault than you would a power cut. 

    What's the mains supply like in your area? There are of course some areas which don't have very good reliability. Notifying BT that you are vulnerable and asking (or rather, politely demanding) a battery backup will be the only way here. Do also think about your own telephone usage. Indeed PAYG mobile calls can be costly, but if you have a power cut or other outage, could the call wait till the service is back up? Could you ask the other person to call you back? My PAYG mobile costs 25p/min but most people I know with mobiles have inclusive minutes and would be quite happy to call me back for free.

    It may be worth telling BT that you would like to migrate to DV - this might speed it up, rather than simply waiting for them to do it.

    Do also consider changing providers. Again, this is easier said than done, but some have much better prices than others, and some have much better customer service than others. I do think that BT are the only ones with a 'universal service obligation' though.