It comes as a million households are set to be forced to transfer to broadband to keep their landline, with fears the elderly could be cut off as the old copper wire system will be replaced by digital voice technology
Since she was switched to digital voice in February, 87-year-old Janet Brown has been regularly cut off from her phone – sometimes for as long as days at a time.
Janet, a former teacher living alone in Stratford-upon-Avon, has dementia and relied on her landline as the main way she contacted her two daughters as well as old friends. Her daughter Maggie Collard, 57, told The Mirror that the situation has caused her mother distress and worsened her dementia symptoms.
“The longest the phone has continuously worked has been 11 days,” says Maggie. “During the past six months, my mother’s dementia has become worse – she’s had new symptoms such as hallucinating myself and my sister being there but she’s unable to speak to us, which is such a metaphor for not being able to communicate.
“We believe her dementia has escalated a direct result of not being confident that she can pick up the phone for support. There’s been a couple of occasions where she hasn’t been able to contact us and she’s left the house and wandered around very confused.”