At 91, Ginette, retired from National Education in Finistère, waits for the phone call every night of her grandchildren. To do this, she uses an old landline, a relic that we still use this means of communication abundantly to keep in touch with her loved ones.
A touch of nostalgia crosses her when she remembers learning Mitterrand’s elections on the phone, she warned of the neighbors. “The phone has always been a way to keep the news informed. I have a TV, but I don’t use it much, even today. This is how I learned for Mitterrand and Chirac,” he tells us, from this landline to the one who is so attached.
“I don’t want to go through an old woman”
Because like thousands of people, Ginette doesn’t have a mobile phone “and even less a smartphone, I don’t understand anything about these things,” he breathes by phone. On the other hand, she knows that the time of the telephone connected to the dedicated slimer “T” has ended in her small town, so she had to go through an alternative and particularly expensive solution.
Then he subscribed to one of Orange’s “fixed” offers. The historical operator offers plans only dedicated to fixed phones. To connect it, you need a Livebox, but it does not have access to the Internet. Monthly cost of “unlimited calls”? 46 euros per month. There is much cheaper, but you only have the right two hours a month before leaving the package.
A solution far from the ideal, but that remains the only proposal, while the end of the ADSL and the copper network is closer to France. It is even more essential as with the multiplication of characteristics, smartphones with much less expensive packages are increasingly inaccessible to the elderly or disconnected.
“They lent me a small Nokia phone, but the keys are too small and my opinion is no longer the same as 30 years,” says Ginette. Even “made for older” phones do not find thanks to their eyes.
“In Orange, they were very friendly and they accepted my little strange request, I admit it,” pleanant ginette.
Older people in the face of technological advances
The same observation for Albert, a former worker at Corrèze: “When I see what is happening on television with all these connected objects, I don’t want to go.”
He also has a landline that aims to use “as long as possible.” In their scarcely populated apartment, 10 municipalities have already been separated from the copper network. “I live in a town of 500 inhabitants, so I know that soon,” explains this 86 -year -old senior, a touch of bitterness in his voice.
Ginette and Albert are not the only ones in this situation. For these, interested regions and departments at the end of the copper network offer support, while Orange is exhausted in the municipalities concerned with people who can help them with precision as much as possible.
Orange explains “Support all its clients”
Questioned by Tech & Co on this subject, Orange explains “supporting all its clients and in particular our elders in this technological transition in the most fluid way possible.”
When a municipality refers to the end of the copper network, subscribers have two possibilities: stay with orange and change to fiber without the Internet panel, or subscribe to a satellite offer if the fiber is not available, but with a “plug & play” box, “easy to install”, we promise, without changing the phone number. This last offer is often offered in Ephads, “if customers do not want a smartphone.”
The historical operator does not want to communicate the number of subscribers that only have a fixed offer, but “the empty copper network of its users at a sustained pace,” said a Tech & Co spokesman for a year, the decrease reached almost 25%.
By 2030, it is, therefore, a complete part of the history of telecommunications that will definitely close. The future is very high speed, wiring or satellite, but for the elderly, the landline will remain essential for a few more years.
Source: BFM TV
