Full Fibre To The Property with Digital Voice and Third Party Router

[vintman7]

I’m afraid the technical jargon is above my head, but I wonder if anyone can help?

I have a smart hub 2 and live in a T shaped stone barn.

To get a WiFi signal throughout we needed three BT discs which  gives us good WiFi coverage throughout.

We had four phones in the house on the copper system

Last Monday we were put on Digital Voice and were provided with two Essential BT phones.

They work well provided they are in range of the Smart 2 hub, which covers about 1/3rd of the house.

However they do not connect to the BT discs, which after hours on the phone to them they admit they won’t!

They sent out a tech engineer on Saturday who said that if they supplied an adaptor we could plug that in near a disc and and plug our old cordless phones in to that.

it arrived this morning and that will only work if it is in range of the hub, it won’t work with the discs. They now admit both the phones and the adaptor won’t work with the discs

What is going on? Why do they supply phones which won’t work with the discs they supply.

Is it a software issue? We heard from our boiler man this afternoon that he had three customers with exactly the same problem, but when you talk to BT they make out this is all new to them!

Can somebody explain to me in layman’s language why they are providing a system that doesn’t work?!

Does anybody have a solution?

thanks

[licquorice]

Digital Voice does not use WiFi, it uses DECT which is the technology that normal cordless phones use. The hub is just a combined WiFi router and cordless base station.

[licquorice]

I have moved your post to start a new thread to avoid confusion with replies as your problem is different to the thread you posted on.

[licquorice]

There are a number of solutions.

If your hub is adjacent to a phone socket, you can simply connect the green phone socket on the rear of the hub to the phone socket with a double ended phone cord extension cord and then use your existing setup of cordless phones. You will need to disconnect the incoming wires to your master socket first to ensure your wiring is completely isolated from the Exchange.

Alternatively, you can site a Digital voice adapter at a suitable location where it can receive the signal from the hub and plug your existing cordless base station into that.

[vintman7]

Thank you

In one sentence you have explained what BT couldn’t in 3 hours and a visit!

I will try your suggestion of connecting to the back of the hub into our internal copper system, having disconnected the internal copper system from the exchange, and will connect to a cordless phone . It seems to me that it would work.

We have an Alarm system that if triggered sends out a voice message to our mobiles via the old BT copper system. This doesn’t work now and the security company wants more than £600 to make it. I think that their messaging system might have been powered off the BT phone line ( 50 v?)

Do you think that if they fitted a 50v supply to their message unit, which is wired directly into our internal copper telephone wires, and the telephone socket near the hub had a connector cable fitted, this would work. My thoughts are similar to your previous suggestion ie using the internal telephone wiring as an extension lead?

If you think this is a possibility the cost should be well below £100!

thanks again

[licquorice]

You would need to talk to the alarm company about that.

[vintman7]

Yes, I would do that, as they would have to fit it.

But I think they would prefer to make a £600 sale!

It would be very helpful to know before I call them if it’s thought it could work.

Do you know the voltage that is used down the BT copper system?

thanks once more

[licquorice]

Yes, it is 50v

[jac_95]

Does the alarm have a battery? Some alarms are dualcomm e.g polling via the copper line and via mobile network, these days via IP too. Majority of the cost minus the monitoring centre was to cover the cost for using the mobile network

[vintman7]

Thank for all your help and advice which is very much appreciated!