The Essex areas where old landlines will be switched off
Five areas in Essex will see old landlines being switched off in a bid to move to the latest broadband technology. Ageing copper wires that have kept homes connected for decades are slowly being made redundant with new fibre cables being switched on instead.
Along with improving broadband speeds, the move to Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology also means a change to the way we all make phone calls. Instead of using old analogue wires to ring friends and family, homes will move over to something called VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
This service should improve call quality along with adding new features such as Multi Call and call diversion to any other phone number including mobile phones. This move to new cables is slowly rolling out across the UK and we now know the next areas that will soon only offer FTTP technology to homes in the future.
Read next: The Essex seaside town where Helen Mirren and Eastenders star Maisie Smith grew up
Read next: The Essex city where hundreds of car parking spaces could be converted into new homes
BT's Openreach - which supplies broadband infrastructure across the UK - has confirmed that 84 new locations will be switched to FTTP in the next 12 months. Once in place, Openreach will then halt the sale of legacy analogue products in more than 880,000 premises across the UK. This will affect suppliers including BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Plusnet who all use Openreach cables to supply homes with the web, The Mirror reports.
"Openreach has today announced a further 84 new exchange locations where the business plans to halt the sale of traditional copper based phone and broadband services to encourage people to upgrade to new digital services over an ultrafast Full Fibre connection," Openreach confirmed.
Chelmsford, Rayleigh, Southend, Barking and Dagenham and Havering are all next in the pipeline to see landlines being switched off.
Here's the full list of areas where copper cables are being switched off
Aberdeen Portlethen
Aberdeen
Addingham
Alderminster
Appleton Roebuck
Ashington (Northumberland)
Greater Manchester - Wigan
Sheffield
Barking and Dagenham
Doncaster
Bishop Auckland
Bridgend
Burnham-on-Sea
Glasgow
Buxton (High Peak)
Carlisle
Gillingham (Kent)
Chesterfield
Trefor
Coalville
Heage
Rippingale
Saintfield
Rugby
Greater Manchester - Manchester
Leicester
Exeter
Flamborough
Ispwich
Grimsby
Rayleigh
Cannock
Houghton-le-Spring Huddersfield
Ilkeston
Ilkley
Kidsgrove
Luton
Leven
Haywards Heath
Llanbrynmair
Cardiff
Wakefield
Mareham le Fen
Chatham
Moore
Greater Manchester - Tameside
Motherwell
Greater London - Southwark
New Mills • South Cave
North Kelsey
Greater Manchester - Oldham
Penistone • Pontardawe • Raunds • Rearsby
Craigavon
Ross-on-Wye
Rotherfield
Chelmsford
Rugby
Scotter
Scunthorpe
Sherburn (County Durham)
Skegness
Solihull
Blackpool
Southend-on-Sea
Stotfold
Stratford-upon-Avon
Antrim
Leicester
Torquay
Tregynon
Ellington (Northumberland)
Bradford
Havering
Waltham on the Wolds
Rotherham
Brighton and Hove
Get more news from EssexLive straight to your inbox for FREE