Digital voice 'phones only work near your hub!

[Geebees]

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?

[spile]

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.

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

@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.

[Geebees]

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?  

[imjolly]

@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

[Geebees]

Thank you.

[Geebees]

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!

[Keith_Beddoe]

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

I am pleased you have it sorted 😀

[Geebees]

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.

[Tmax]

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