[57]

Will this new ignite platform they use to manage acounts allow them to have a telephone line on the account but no tv nor internet provisioned?

IgniteTV/Internet is not new. It's been around for over 5.5 years. The answer to your question is a quite simple NO. You cannot get Home Phone on its own from Rogers as a new customer. Some Legacy Digital Cable customers may remain with Home Phone for a while, but not long since everyone is being migrated to IgniteTV and Digital Cable will be no more. As I stated before, Home Phone is only available as an add-on to IgniteTV/Internet.

 

[17671]

I am pretty sure many others as well as myself clearly understand that home phone is ONLY available as an add-on for BRAND NEW customers on the not so new 5.5 year old Ignite TV and Internet platform.

The question that was not answered is Will an EXISTING Home phone customer provisioned on the NON Ignite standalone home phone Service when they are eventually migrated to the ignite platform, will they eventually be required to sign up to a NEW package of internet or TV, or will they keep their existing home phone ONLY on the ignite or will they be told their home phone can not be migrated at all and lose it once the migration to ignite is complete?

 

[JamesK]

The question hasn't been answered because we don't know. That's up to Rogers. Have you asked them? You might also consider porting your number to one of those low cost phone services. Some will even allow you to use a soft phone app on your cell phone, in addition to the box you'd use with a wired phone.

Stand alone phone service is a dying business. Even back in 2007 I was installing small VoIP PBXs for businesses. In addition to the VoIP phones, they could be used with a soft phone on a computer. I could have even set up a soft phone on cell phones, if smart phones had been available back then. Even in business, someone's office phone these days is often a cell phone, with or without soft phone.

 

[ExDilbert]

When Rogers offered stand alone phone service it cost about $40. With price increases that would likely be $50-$60 as Rogers needs to pay for overhead costs and infrastructure. I doubt many people would pay that much and Rogers, understandably, does not want to provide standalone VoIP to compete with low cost VoIP providers. They rely on other companies' infrastructure to keep costs low. The switch to $10 add-on VoIP phone service is basically a loss leader to attract home phone customers, with other services paying the cost of infrastructure.

 

[Humbar]

I'm guessing that Rogers bean counters looked at how many standalone customers for Home Phone existed, and likely found very few, so they opted to offer it only as an add-on for a very low price and found that likely works better for their bottom line. More and more customers are dropping Home Phone altogether in favor of just a mobile line which makes sense, why pay for both. I haven't had a Home Line for 5 years and it works for me, plus if an outage occurs my cell service still works. I think only the Older Folks crowd seem stuck on maintaining a Home Line. When I look at the younger crowd that have moved out, all my nieces and nephews and kids of my friends, none have a Home phone. I'm now wondering what Bells plans are regarding Home Phone services? They still offer a very expensive plan.

 

[JamesK]

With Ignite, Rogers only has to provide one box to support Internet, TV and phone, plus an IPTV box that connects to the TV. That in itself is a cost savings. There is no other difference in what they have to provide, other than a VoIP PBX somewhere. Everything else, be it the coax, trunks, fibre/coax nodes, CMTS and more is identical for any of those services.

 

[57]

1. Will an EXISTING Home phone customer provisioned on the NON Ignite standalone home phone Service when they are eventually migrated to the ignite platform, will they eventually be required to sign up to a NEW package of internet or TV,
2. or will they keep their existing home phone ONLY on the ignite or will they be told their home phone can not be migrated at all and lose it once the migration to ignite is complete?

1. Very likely if they want to keep their home phone. I doubt there are more than a handful of people, if that, who only have Rogers Home Phone and not Rogers Internet or TV. There would be no reason to.
2. If they only have home phone, it's extremely likely they will lose it and will need to find an alternative, like VOIP from someone else, or cell phone.

 

[ExDilbert]

I'm now wondering what Bells plans are regarding Home Phone services?

I suspect that it's very similar to Rogers. POTS (traditional twisted pair home phone) will likely be supported for existing home phone customers for some time. In places where fibre is installed, it will be discontinued and replaced with VoIP as maintaining two types of infrastructure is not economical. Whether many people want to pay $55-$70/mo (plus extra fees) for standalone VoIP home phone is not likely as a good wireless plan can be purchased for that. VoIP is so cheap from third party providers that its a slam dunk but I know people who are still hanging on to POTS and others that have (almost) free VoIP or dropped home phone.

Bell's pricing for POTS home phone seems to be designed to drive customers away as the same service (grandfathered) from third parties is about half that and typical VoIP plans are about 1/4 Bell's price.

 

[Humbar]

VOIP Is dirt cheap, just look at the prices for OOMA and MagicJack, and both work great. I doubt Bell will lower their prices on Home Phone via Fibre and VOIP. Bell never lowers prices or initiates lowering prices. They only do when their main competitors do. None of the big 3 are even offering a cheap Canada-USA plan like Freedom is now doing.

 

[17671]

Home phone may indeed be a dying business, but it can not be simply be eliminated just like that. For some residential customers, especially the elderly and people with disabilities it is their only way to communicate with the outside world, Some have medical devices such as lifesign or lifeline and they require it. For businesses, some businesses still require landline for taking calls with clients, for sending and receiving faxes, yes even though fax is old school, some still use it. so even though it might be okay in some people's' view to eliminate it, you should think of the people who kind of need it before you make such judgement call.

 

[JamesK]

As I mentioned, there are those cheap VoIP services. The traditional telephone, with a pair of wires is definitely on the way out. If you have a phone these days, any phone including cell phones, it's likely using VoIP. A lot of businesses now use hosted PBX, where the IP phones connect to a server out in "the cloud". Companies can even have their own inexpensive VoIP PBX. I was setting them up in 2007. There is even open source PBX software, such as Asterisk, where you can set up a PBX with little more than a computer.

As for FAX, that's also on it's last legs, as the 2 main areas where it managed to hang on, well beyond it's best before date, the legal and medical fields, are moving away from it.

 

[17671]

rogers home phone is for the most part pretty much very similar to those cheap VoIP services, with the exception, rogers has its own network, its prioritized and network segregation and an all in one gateway which has the voip inside, now that was only the technical side of it, yes billing wise, lots of other companies charge dirt cheap for home phone compared to rogers and other pstn providers. that is why voip is hugely popular

Just because rogers is forced to provide home phone does not mean its the "only" option, however for some people such as elderly or with disabilities, it is a bit of a convenience to have all the services handled by one company so that is one reason why people may want to continue using it.

 

[Humbar]

When someone says they don't like VOIP because they may lose it during a power outage, well that point is kind of moot since most people now have a mobile phone which can be cheaper than a landline that will work in a power outage.

 

[57]

Also, almost no providers have backup batteries on their nodes any more - way too expensive. So, if the power failure affects the node in your area, you will not have "home phone". This goes for Rogers and Bell and anyone on their infrastructure. These providers stopped replacing the backup batteries in their nodes years ago and some people may still have a working one in their area if they're lucky, but most do not. Even if the "last mile" is twisted pair, the feed to the area is almost always fibre these days and the node needs to be powered to operate.

In addition, most people don't have a UPS for their modems/gateways, so if their power goes down, the phone will be down.

So, yes, a cell phone is a good idea for emergencies/backup.

 

[Humbar]

Yes, if the Node goes down the whole area that the node serves goes down as well. Their are often multiple power supplies serving a Node area so sometimes only part of a Node area can go down if a PS Further downstream goes out. Yes, batteries are expensive to replace but are also very labor intensive to do as well because they are heavy. Some have to be lifted by pulley into an aerial location cabinet using a Bucket Truck, some have up to 6 Batteries. Not a fun job.

 

[JamesK]

@Humbar

Yep, been there, done that. A few years ago I was working on a project to upgrade the power supplies at Freedom Mobile sites in the Ottawa & Gatineau area. This included batteries. At one site, we had to go through a hatch at the top of a ladder that went straight up the wall. We wound up buying a boat winch and strut channel to hoist the batteries up

 

[ExDilbert]

The issue in some areas is that the batteries are stolen and sold as scrap. The pedestal covers are also stolen and the wiring left hanging out and exposed to the elements for days or weeks. I'm surprised they didn't steal the wiring as well as there have been businesses not to far from here that have had electrical service wiring and other things like air conditioner lines torn off the outside walls and stolen.

 

[Humbar]

Rogers had a problem years back with batteries being stolen. They cut the wiring harnesses that are connected to a modem for monitoring. Eventually the cops caught the guy.

 

[Tridus]

When someone says they don't like VOIP because they may lose it during a power outage, well that point is kind of moot since most people now have a mobile phone which can be cheaper than a landline that will work in a power outage.

Hopefully the mobile works in a power outage. It's pretty hit or miss around me, as some of the towers go down pretty quickly and the networks tend to overload. Getting anything out beyond a SMS can get pretty sketchy.

But yeah, home phone is barely worth selling these days for a company Rogers size. It's just not a selling feature for most folks anymore, so throwing it in the bundle and otherwise not bothering probably makes sense. I know I only have it because we've got a significant bundle discount, but I'd never pay a dime for it considering almost every call I get on it is just robocall spam with a faked number.

 

[velix]

Google still links to the page, but now $30 per month when stand alone. Wireless Home Phone - Rogers