Landline Digital Switchover
We discussed this again at the last meeting where I mentioned that some telecare personal alarm providers were reportedly unable to meet the December 2025 deadline for the end of the current landline system. We first mentioned the plan to discontinue the 100+ year old PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and replace it with VoIP carried over broadband technology back in September 2021:-
https://computerclub100.blogspot.com/2021/09/
BT announced on Monday 20th May this year that the PSTN switch-off timetable has been extended to January 2027, i.e. by just over 1 year. Even after that, there will be some areas where FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) is not available – these will continue to get broadband and phone services over the existing copper wire until universal fibre coverage is available by 2030. See this article by ISPreview for more details:-
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/05/bt-updates-uk-digital-voice-switchover-plan-after-deadline-extension.html
Customers who already have FTTP probably already have VoIP if they wanted it. Any FTTP customers who retained a separate copper PSTN landline will, I believe, have to switch to VoIP, but there should be no extra cost for this.
Customers without any broadband will be contacted by their telecoms provider to switch to an FTTP VoIP solution where possible. Again, there should be no extra charge for doing this. Where FTTP is not available or if existing special equipment (e.g. alarms) cannot yet operate with fibre, an interim service over the existing copper will be provided - there will be more details on this later this year.
Battery back-up units may be available in some situations for "vulnerable users"
So, for most people, the switch-over will just involve unplugging their phone from the old socket on the wall and plugging it into a socket on the back of the router.
Dave asked about installations that currently have FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet). My guess is that, where FTTP is not available, VoiP could still be provided over the FTTC broadband, but I am not sure.
BT Call Protect
Tony asked about BT's Call Protect service. I do not use this service, but, according to this BT web site, it is a free service for BT customers:-
https://www.bt.com/help/security/bt-call-protect----how-to-----guide
It aims to block unwanted calls by using a Blocklist which BT have complied. You can add up to 100 numbers to your own blocklist and you can choose to block international calls and withheld or unrecognised numbers.
“Copilot+” PCs
At the Club meetings in March and April this year, we discussed “AI PCs”. These will have specialised processors called NPUs (Neural Processing Units) and a Copilot key on the keyboard.
This recent article from Ghacks, refers to Microsoft’s announcement that they are releasing AI PCs which will be called “Copilot+” PCs:-
https://www.ghacks.net/2024/05/21/microsoft-announces-copilot-pcs-and-ai-powered-recall-feature/
The article also talks about new features of Copilot+ PCs, including Recall. Recall takes a snapshot of the screen every few seconds and stores this information locally. Users can later search this information using natural language queries. So, if you want to return to something you were doing or had seen a few days/weeks ago, the AI searching through these stored screenshots might get you back there. There has been considerable concern about the privacy and security of storing screenshots in this way which may present another target for hackers. However, the Recall feature can be disabled, and it looks like Microsoft will make this an opt-in feature – see this BBC article from 7th June:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd11rje1mrro
The first Copilot+ PCs will not be available until later this month. The Recall feature will only be available on these Copilot+ PCs, it will not be added to existing PCs through any updates.
Interestingly, the first Copilot+ PCs will be based on ARM processors (like modern smartphones and Apple Macs). So these first PCs will use Qualcomm Snapdragon chips rather than Intel/AMD, although those will come later.
See this Microsoft page for more information on Copilot+ PCs:-
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/copilot-plus-pcs?r=1
Siri Gets AI
Apple has announced that it will be partnering with OpenAI to bring AI (Artificial Intelligence) to the Apple Siri voice assistant. OpenAI is heavily funded by Microsoft and is the company behind ChatGPT which we first talked about at the Club back in December 2022:-
https://computerclub100.blogspot.com/2022/12/
See this BBC article from 10th June for more:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nn5mejl89o
In the FAQ section of the above page, it answers a couple of questions which were asked at the Club relating to the storage space used and deleting older snapshots - see this extract from the page:-
Copilot+ PC storage size determines the number of snapshots that Recall can take and store. The minimum hard drive space needed to run Recall is 256 GB, and 50 GB of space must be available. The default allocation for Recall on a device with 256 GB will be 25 GB, which can store approximately 3 months of snapshots. You can increase the storage allocation for Recall in your PC Settings. Old snapshots will be deleted once you use your allocated storage, allowing new ones to be stored.
ITVx Problems
Linda was having issues with some ITV-X content which failed to play in the Edge browser with the message “Can’t play this content” and Error 10-01. Some people have reported the following as helpful:-
Enable DRM (Digital Rights Management) content. In Edge, go to 3-dots, Settings, (click 3-bars symbol, if necessary), Cookies and site permissions, scroll down to Protected content IDs and check that both settings are enabled.
It is possible a future update to Edge might resolve this. Otherwise, just use Chrome or an alternative browser to play ITV-X, as this seems to work OK.
Chrome Extension Changes
Google is blocking the use of “Manifest V2” browser extensions starting from 3rd June - initially only in the Beta, Dev or Canary channels, it will come to the normal Stable channel later. All browser extensions will have to be updated to Manifest V3 to continue working. Google claims this will enhance security, privacy and performance. However, this new specification for extensions may limit their capabilities, compared to the existing Manifest V2 versions. This will affect all Chrome and Chromium-based browsers, including Edge, Brave and Vivaldi.
At the moment, it seems that Firefox and Safari are supporting Manifest V3 extensions but are not deprecating the Manifest V2 extensions, so they can continue to be used.
So, if you use an affected extension on Chrome, expect to see pop-up messages advising you to update or remove extensions. If you want to continue using a Manifest V2 extension, you may have to switch to Firefox.
You can read more in this Ghacks article:-
https://www.ghacks.net/2024/05/31/google-will-disable-classic-extensions-in-chrome-in-the-coming-months/
Lost Google Password
Linda is trying to support someone who has forgotten their Google password and cannot, therefore access their email account which they currently need to reset their NHS Digital password.
With regard to the resetting the Google password, Dave kindly provided the following link after the meeting:-
https://guidebooks.google.com/get-started-with-google/stay-safer-with-google/how-to-recover-your-google-account?hl=en
With regard to resetting the NHS Digital password, the NHS Contact page may help:-
https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/contact-us
This gives an email contact:-
enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk
and a telephone contact of: 0300 303 5678
Next Session
Wed 10th July 2024 at 2pm by Zoom
