Confusion: Digital Voice and Old Phones

[Caulkhead53]

@Keith_Beddoe 

@licquorice 

@imjolly 

As the 3 guys who seemed to be 'au fait' with all things digital voice can I ask these questions (some have been answered before in another post)?

1. Just received Digital Voice Phone. This just connects to SH by 'DECT'?

2.  Does this aforesaid connect to my current cordless BT Premium Phones (Qty 4) for contacts, etc?

3.  If not do I plug my master phone, currently connected to copper line, via an adapter so that these 4 work in the Digital Voice system?

4.  As said before my wife is disabled and has a phone next to her chair which cannot reach in anyway to the SH which is nearly 2mtrs up on a shelf in a corner of the room (To keep away from cats, etc.

5.  Have been told I can plug my current cordless phone into SH as opposed to using adapter, which is doable but takes it away from the hallway where it currently is.

BT themselves seem to to be tying everyone in knots including themselves! 😂😂

Thanks in advance.

PS.  Have ordered an adapter , just in case. 😁

[imjolly]

If you have ordered an adapter then you should be able toplug that into a power socket and it will pair with THE SH2 (dect base station) and then connect your wireless phone base station to the adapter and your 4 phones should work.

Your contact will not transfer automatically to the DV phone but you may be able to import your contact.  Did you get the DV phone with Alexa built in?

[Caulkhead53]

@imjolly 

Strangely it didn't give me that option. 😭

• Thanks for that. Pity BT couldn't explain things better but thanks to you guys we are a lot wiser. 😁

[dqj999]

You mentioned that you have some rotary phones that you use. Although none of your replies has mentioned this, there is a problem with using rotary phones with the Digital Voice service. 

If by some chance you manage to re-wire the master socket to the telephone port on the back of the Smart Hub, the rotary phones would be unable to make calls as the old fashioned method of signalling is no longer recognised by the Smart Hub. I've tried this and it does not work. 

BT can supply an adapter that enables you to plug in a standard phone from somewhere else in your house. I've not got one of these so I can't say for certain whether this would allow you to dial out using a rotary phone, I suspect not though. 

If when you plug a phone into the existing master socket there is no service and the line appears completely dead then your existing master socket has now been disconnected from the exchange by BT, you might be able to extend the signal from the back of Smart Hub in the following way:

DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU STILL HAVE A WORKING PHONE LINE ON THE MASTER SOCKET!

1. Plug in an ADSL filter into the master socket. 

2. Get a 4-wire lead that has an RJ11 plug on one end and a BT plug on the other.  NB Must be a 4-wire lead nota 2-wire one.

3. Plug the RJ11 plug into the ADSL port of the filter and plug the other end into the router.

That should now enable all of the phones to access the Hub.

Good luck!

[Gary_C]

In addition, rotary telephones can be modified to do tone dialling. There are a few kits advertise online, however you can buy ready modified GPO 746 phones on Amazon.

[ecarter19]

Very interesting discussion. Does anyone know if you can plug a DECT base station into the SH socket whilst at the same time also running an old hard wired phone into the SH via the BT DECT adapter plug?

[imjolly]

@ecarter19 

You can connect another cordless base station to the phone so let on the back of the SH2. The DV adapter connects to a power socket and your corded phone would connect to the adapter.  You could do it the other way round if that suited you better

[ecarter19]

assume you mean "outlet" on the back of the SH2 but so long as the two will work together that will sort my neighbour out thanks

[imjolly]

Yes should read outlet. Predictive text for you

[Caulkhead53]

Now connected to Digital Voice but maddening thing now is that although connected via Adapter on 'old' base unit and contacts OK for dialing out, we now appear to have lost our 'accepted or VIP' list of callers which doesn't help the wife's elderly mother when calling and having to use the # symbol when encountering the call protect system.

Is this a byproduct of the new system.

Spoke to an adviser last night and a 'fault' has been raised (for completion by 05/07/21!) as to why I cannot access a supposed VIP list anywhere, again supposedly in amongst the Call Protect  system. It shows on some screen print thingy shown somewhere but dammed if I can find it!

Over to you guys! 😊