Digital Voice

[MattUK]

I've had (or had) digital voice until recently.

Don't know how large your home is but we were supplied with 2 new handsets that connected to the main hub.  As you say, there is a socket on the back of the hub for you to connect non digital voice handsets to, so I would suggest you connect your existing base station if you want to remain on that to the back of the hub.

With respect to your alarm, you may need to do some research on that as I don't believe its supported for that kind of use any more and you won't be able to 'wire it' into anything any more.

I had no issues with coverage over my 2 story house, but you often find there is no dial tone and things need rebooting. For me not a problem as i don't use the home phone really.

BT will not commit to much on DV and you are reminded that in the event of powercut you have no phone so you need to use something else.  As your FTTP is old, you may have the battery backup unit fitted which in theory covers that.

For me, the alarm would be the most important thing to tackle.

[Leachim]

We have FTTP and have just been told that our landline is going to be shut down and we will have to use digital voice which goes through the Home Hub 2.

I had never heard of it, so I started to research. There is a lot of confusing, contradictory information, but it seems to boil down to;

The BT Home Hub 2 is also a DECT base station, plus it has a hard wired socket that an "adapter" can be plugged into which then allows a standard phone to be plugged in.

The BT Home Hub 2 then acts as a "portal" between the DECT device or adapter and VOIP.

Assuming that to be close enough (please let me know if I've got it wrong) I have a number of questions;

1) How do I connect to my existing phone extension system? Apart from our DECT phone system and range extender, we have 1 x "normal" phone, 1 x alarm system which dials out on alarm and 1 x emergency phone in our lift (must be connected to comply with fire regs), all located in various different places, all of which are connected to our existing hard wired system and none of which can be in the same location as the Hub.

2) How do I extend the DECT range of the Home Hub, which will certainly be inadequate? I understand the "discs" do not do this. I am certain this is a problem because two of our "discs" are outside wifi repeater range of the hub and have to be connected with Cat5E in order to provide wifi throughout our large house (with very thick brick walls).

3) Is it BTs' legal responsibility to ensure that Digital Voice works adequately and is fit for purpose?

Mike

[imjolly]

this explains about the DV adapter

extension://bfdogplmndidlpjfhoijckpakkdjkkil/pdf/viewer.html?file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bt.com%2Fcontent%2Fdam%2Fbt%2Fhelp%2Fuser-guides%2FDigital-Voice-Adapter-userguide.pdf

[Keith_Beddoe]

This is is the link https://www.bt.com/help/user-guides/phones/digital-voice/digital-voice-adapter

[Leachim]

Thanks Keith and imjolly.

That explains the item they are calling an adapter. It isn't - it's actually a converter, converting pulse or tone dial signals to and from DECT for one piece of apparatus only. Getting three of them would solve most of my problems, but it needs a mains supply and there isn't one inside the lift for the emergency phone.

I can get around the power outage problems for the hub and the incoming fibre socket by installing UPS's for each of them (although I feel BT should supply these as part of the package), but I can't put a UPS in the lift - no suitable power supply.

It seems crazy there is not an adapter that utilises the existing home phone wiring. It could just replace the existing Master Socket front plate for the defunct copper line in and it's connected, no wiring involved at all. It could also share the UPS for the fibre socket if fibre and copper are adjacent.

That would be much more useful and easier to install than the "adapter" they have created. You would only need one adapter and everything would continue to work exactly as it always has - no modifications or resiting required for any existing equipment, including emergency phones and alarm systems.

[Leachim]

Hi Matt

Thanks for the reply. We use our landline a lot (business and personal), and it's obvious from your reply that you had serious problems with the phones. You said that they were not at all reliable and you had to repeatedly reboot the system. That would be an unacceptable level of service for us.

No, we don't have a UPS on our fibre system, and we would need to add two UPS's anyway as our hub is 60 feet away from the incoming fibre, and on a different floor! Our house is three stories, built of very thick brick walls and is pretty big. It was a Victorian school.

I suspect there is no solution to the emergency phone in the lift. Everything BT supplies is dependant on a mains power supply. We would need an amazing extension lead!

Cheers

Mike

[imjolly]

I have used my DV phones for over 9 months and never had any problems

[Keith_Beddoe]

---

@Leachim wrote:

It seems crazy there is not an adapter that utilises the existing home phone wiring. It could just replace the existing Master Socket front plate for the defunct copper line in and it's connected, no wiring involved at all. It could also share the UPS for the fibre socket if fibre and copper are adjacent.

---

There is nothing to stop you linking the phone socket on the back of the SH2, into your existing phone wiring, at any point in the loop, just like people did with FVA.

You just need a lead like this. Ignore the reference to the ONT.

You would need to disconnect the existing master phone socket, from the external network.

That would then extent the phone connection to all of the existing sockets.

[Leachim]

Hi Keith

Nice idea, but I've spoken to BT and they are not convinced it will work. I think it's because the adaptor hasn't been tested that way and is designed to supply sufficient power to support only one device (1xREN) but the person I spoke to didn't have enough knowledge to confirm that.

Trying it would be a mistake, as once it's switched over, there's no going back. If it didn't work, that would write our lift off - a very, very expensive mistake.

BT have now put our conversion on hold for the foreseeable future. An adapter designed and tested to do what I suggested would be great. Hopefully they'll come up with a solution before 2025!

[Keith_Beddoe]

Not sure what the REN of the phone port on the SH2 is, but that may only be 1, as it has to rely on generating the ringing current from power supply (12v) feeding the SH2.

As the conversion is on hold at the moment, its not going to be an immediate problem.