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Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Geebees — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 19:03:18 GMT

I have been moved over to digital voice and BT supplied me with three new digital handsets plus I have one of my old phones plugged into the hub. My house is on four different levels and I have had to get four WiFi discs to send the WiFi signal round the house successfully. I have superfast fibre to the property broadband so no problem with speed/ bandwidth. My hub is in my lounge at one end of the house on the ground floor where the fibre comes into my property. However, my office is on the top floor at the other end of the house. What BT don't tell you is that, although you can have numerous handsets connected to your hub, they won't work unless they are within a certain range of your actual hub - and that range is not great. Digital voice has got nothing to do with your WiFi signal strength so my discs make no difference to the range of the 'phones. I used to be able to use my old wireless slave phones all over the house as long as I had a master plugged into a telephone socket within range but now I can only use two phones that are on the ground floor. The rest of the phones don't work as they are out of range of the hub. I have spoken to BT so many times in the last couple of weeks trying to find out what the problem was with my digital voice (sound breaking up, disconnecting calls, continual beeping noises during calls, crackling, fuzzy audio) and only found this out yesterday. I am very unhappy about this awful backwards step. I now have to use my mobile if I am upstairs in the house and rush down three flights of stairs if my landline rings. BT Tech Support don't seem to be up to speed on Digital Voice either as some of the suggestions I had from them on the 'phone yesterday were, quite frankly, ludicrous. I ended up coming up with some better ideas. In the end, they gave up and said there was nothing they could do for me so it has been left as a lodged complaint. Has anyone found a way round this?

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

spile — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 06:37:25 GMT

I find Digital Voice a poorly implemented solution made worse by its non standard protocols. It would have been much better for BT to have implemented standard VOIP protocols rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Keith_Beddoe — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 06:53:08 GMT

@Geebees

You can connect your existing internal phone wiring to the socket on the home hub, just like it was originally connected to your master socket. All you need is a patch cable between the two, and to also disconnect your internal wiring from the external network.

That would enable you to use your original phones.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Geebees — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 09:09:36 GMT

Wow Keith - thank you. So if I plug this patch cable into the hub and then into my master telephone socket (or can it be any telephone socket as the master is not very near the hub?) then I am basically using the existing wiring network for my telephone sockets around the house and can plug my old 'phones back in? The bit about disconnecting from the external network sounds beyond my technical capabilities. My land line and all the telephone sockets are dead so are they disconnected or do I have to do something with my junction box on the outside of the house? Your answer sounds ideal - how come BT don't advise this?

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

imjolly — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 09:33:41 GMT

@Geebees

if you try as @Keith_Beddoe suggested then go to master socket and on back plate just disconnect the incoming Openreach cables on terminals A&B - job done

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Geebees — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 13:40:19 GMT

Thank you.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Geebees — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 15:13:06 GMT

Unfortunately it wasn't that straightforward as, unbeknown to me, I had another telephone number linked to my property from a previous owner who had two telephone lines. Fortunately, I had an Open Zone engineer coming in to look at my broadband and he disconnected the copper connection in the outside junction box. So now the external network connection is well and truly disconnected, the patch cable is working a treat with my internal network connections and all my old telephone sockets in the house are usable again. Thank God for this forum as BT had basically told me to bin my old 'phones!

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Keith_Beddoe — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 15:16:34 GMT

@Geebees You mean Openreach of course, not Open Zone.

I am pleased you have it sorted 😀

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Geebees — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 15:31:29 GMT

Yes - I realised as soon as I hit enter that I had gone into the past - I did mean Open Reach 😀 Thank you again for your help.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Tmax — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 10:14:37 GMT

If using the patch cable from the hub to the old wiring, you should be able to plug that into any of the wall sockets, not just the master one. In my case the old master socket is on a different floor to the ONT and modem.

If that can be done, then to disconnect the old wiring from the external system I only need to remove the master socket faceplate and put a blank on it ? Or is that to simplistic

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Keith_Beddoe — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 10:24:34 GMT

@Tmax wrote:

If using the patch cable from the hub to the old wiring, you should be able to plug that into any of the wall sockets, not just the master one. In my case the old master socket is on a different floor to the ONT and modem.

If that can be done, then to disconnect the old wiring from the external system I only need to remove the master socket faceplate and put a blank on it ? Or is that to simplistic

Provided you have FTTP and not FTTC, otherwise you would lose your broadband connection.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Tmax — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 10:27:01 GMT

Yes I am FTTP... I should have said.... with the ONT on the upper floor, the old master socket on the ground floor..... thanks

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

duberry — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 16:01:21 GMT

Right I was forwarded here from another part of the forum. We ordered home essentials for my mum as faster broadband speed. Unbeheld to me this comes with digital voice. I thought it was just routing calls over the internet so never took any notice of it. Only to find now it means something different. It seems to be poorly implemented as it affects a lot of people.

I was offered two free sets which I took when I phoned back to query ‘digital voice’.

My mum’s setup was one phone line down stairs from master to living room. Router upstairs with router cable from master upstairs. Two phone lines upstairs but only one connected to the phone via extension.

This was done in the early ‘90’s. Broadband splitter is the actual phone socket itself.

Now would it be better to have the adapters or use the new phones?

He said one has to be plugged into the router. But surely if the phones are wireless they should connect the base units anywhere.

Could I reuse the old cabling and take it from the phone socket to the router and use adaptors or our the new phone a better bet.

My mum had the BT 4600 premium nuisance call blocker. Are these new phones up-to standard?
Nothing is ever easy but thanks for any ideas.

Just to add it is Fibre to the Cabinet

Amir

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

imjolly — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 16:24:40 GMT

the DV phones are cordless and connect using DECT to the SH2 which is the base station. the phones come with a small base which acts as the phone charger and can be place wherever is suits and just plug charger into main electric socket. being dect the coverage is better than wifi

I don't understand your reference to master downstairs and master upstairs - there should only be one master phone socket in your home

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

duberry — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 19:41:30 GMT

My mistake it’s from the master to upstairs. Just in case you don’t understand it’s the master socket I’m talking about.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Bemuzeduk — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 06:29:42 GMT

I have also been 'upgraded' and have 2 new digital handsets, which work fine for us.

I also plugged our old analogue phone network into the router and they work fine, both the corded BT Decor handsets and the BT2000 Trio walk about phones.

However the new digital and old anaolgue seem to be on different circuits. If we pick up an incoming call on the corded handsets, the old walk about phones can join the call, but not the new digital phones. So if we pick up a call in the study, where the corded handsets are, the new digital handsets are useless.

Any ideas?

Is the a different button to press, or can we buy corded digital phones?

As someone else said, BT support know very little about this.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Andy005 — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 07:11:56 GMT

@Bemuzedukwrote:
I have also been 'upgraded' and have 2 new digital handsets, which work fine for us.
I also plugged our old analogue phone network into the router and they work fine, both the corded BT Decor handsets and the BT2000 Trio walk about phones.
However the new digital and old anaolgue seem to be on different circuits. If we pick up an incoming call on the corded handsets, the old walk about phones can join the call, but not the new digital phones. So if we pick up a call in the study, where the corded handsets are, the new digital handsets are useless.
Any ideas?
Is the a different button to press, or can we buy corded digital phones?
As someone else said, BT support know very little about this.

They are separate and they have different features eg the digital handsets allow you to make/receive two calls at the same time. My suggestion would be to buy more digital handsets if you want more handsets, handsets of the same type makes more sense to me than a mix.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Bemuzeduk — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 07:48:19 GMT

do they have any corded digital handsets? Otherwise they are always left in the wrong place.

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

Andy005 — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 07:58:00 GMT

@Bemuzedukwrote:
do they have any corded digital handsets? Otherwise they are always left in the wrong place.

I don't believe so. A simpler solution may be to not leave them in the wrong place, or there's an old trick my Mum used when I was a wee lad that stopped me from losing my gloves - it involved a length of elastic 😁

Re: Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

KWest — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 10:07:25 GMT

Hi, just had Digital Voice enabled, opened up the face plate of the Phone Connection but could not find A nd B connection only had 2 and 5. I have an Openreach MK2 box, see below.

Where are the A and B connections located on my connection box and how do I disconnect them?