Smarthub 2 restarting - options ?

[stevie_b1]

Well... I stumbled across this thread. Wish I had at the beginning of the year tbh.

I joined BT in March 2023. I wish I'd known about this issue.

I went for Full Fibre 150/30 package with Digital Voice. The whole service is designed wrong. The landline goes down regularly when the router decides to reboot of its own accord. 

When I had a copper landline, I had one for 20 years in this property, with only one outage due to a telegraph pole wire issue. 

With Digital Voice - frequent outages due to the fact its embedded into a router than cannot stay on for more than a few weeks. 

This whole full fibre “better and more reliable service” isn’t delivering. FTTC was more reliable using my Draytek router. I didn’t have the 1-2 outages per month. The last one was 4th November at 14.46 ! Why??

One BT tech support person insisted on sending me two UPS boxes (one for ONT and one for Smart Hub 2) but I did say I didn’t need them - I don’t have power outages. She insisted (and of course closed my tech support case!), so I have two big black boxes with even more wires. Obviously I had to re-open the case, after they did nothing. 

It’s a shame there isn’t a fix. I have raised via ombudsman because BT don’t seem to be paying attention to this thread and its customers.

I raised the complaint last week after BT issued the 8-week letter, but I just found that I'm not alone in having this issue.

Not sure if anyone is still following this thread - but has anyone had any experience of Sky FFTP and Sky Voice? Does their router stay up?

[caravanj]

Just out of interest, after reading all the posts, there seems to be a conflict of opinion.

Is a 14 day restart normal & anything else is due to a fault or are there no 14 day restarts & all restarts due to a fault? 

If the 14 day restart is normal what purpose does it serve?

[ljm]

My previous hub 6 always (over 5 yrs) rebooted around 14 day mark. No prob.

Will I lose  contact if on a call during the fortnitely reboot of Hub 2, or a Caller won't be able to get through even? 

[caravanj]

@ljm 

Yes, I've just done a hub reset & as expected the phone connection dropped out.

When the broadband reconnected the digital voice didn't & I had the Service not ready  message so I clicked the Reset Base Settings link & it came back on.

It might have come back on on it's own accord but I didn't wait to see.

[StuartHK]

I’d have to agree with the sentiment here.  Damn thing reboots regular as clockwork every 14 days, whether it needs it or not and the connection goes to hell.  Bl**dy ridiculous!

I then have to spend the next two or three days picking the right time to reboot to get it back to the speed I know the line is capable of, at which point its rock solid for another 14 days.  The old HH5 was exactly the same, which is one of the reasons I stopped using BT equipment years ago.  Sadly, the switch to DV has locked me back into BT equipment.

Sorry for the rant but it would be nice if BT could address this.

[stevie_b1]

All - thanks for the replies. I wasnt sure if this thread would appreciate my post / nudge.

@caravanj - I'm not sure mine is doing it every 14 days like clockwork, but it seems like a gap of between 2-4 weeks. Recently there was only a 2-week gap. Before that it felt more like monthly, but I hadn’t been logging precise dates and times until the end of August. Regarding the purpose - I have absolutely no idea and the same seems true from BT responses. It’s not DLM. I was told by one BT Tech Support person that it’s to "keep the best signal" (or something). It sounded like fluff to be honest!!! I wonder if they have built the Digital Voice and Full Fibre Services around a flaky bit of hardware (SH2) and software with potential memory leaks which is being masked by their reboots. Who knows.

@StuartHK - Yes, I agree. It is ridiculous. I have two family members who have full fibre and a VoIP service from Virgin Media. They don’t have these random outages from rooter reboots. I suspect the Smart Hub 2 is junk and flaky yet they have built the BT/EE sales strategy and flagship service around it. Now I mention EE, I’m not sure if the EE version of it has the same issue – it probably doesn’t matter because I want out from this service regardless of the brand / badge. For reference, my firmware is: v0.40.00.04147-BT.  I would happily use my own router (I have a very good Draytek), but just like you, I can’t because of the Digital Voice service. I certainly think when you sign-up for the BT service, as well as the statement about power outages, they should state to new customers that they agree to 1-2 outages per month for "housekeeping" or best signal or something!! At least new customers would know what they are letting themselves in for.

I've pasted short excerpt of the log following a reboot I had 3 days ago (Saturday 4th November at 2.46pm). It’s the "System restart reason: SAAF" message which seems to be a "soft restart". Just before it - the Digital Voice is disconnected via SIP De-registration process. 

BT tech support have said they cannot stop the Smart Hub 2 from doing this - and my complaint case is closed because they have largely given up. When they closed the case, they lady I spoke to did suggest asking the BT Community to see if there is any "unofficial help".

They did send an 8-week letter signposting the ombudsman, and as mentioned, I now have a case with a 2-week period for BT to respond. 

14:46:35 04 Nov. System restart reason: SAAF
14:46:34 04 Nov. TLS 0 Close
14:46:34 04 Nov. SIP 38efc472 SEND 200 NOTIFY
14:46:34 04 Nov. SIP 38efc472 RECV NOTIFY
14:46:34 04 Nov. SIP 38efc472 RECV 200 SUBSCRIBE
14:46:34 04 Nov. SIP 38efc472 SEND SUBSCRIBE
14:46:34 04 Nov. SIP De-registrations

[StuartHK]

@stevie_b1 Yes, my Draytek only used to reboot when I told it to.  To be fair to the SH2 though, the old HH5 I had before used to do the same.  It seems to be more something to do with how FTTC is being managed.

[stevie_b1]

I've had Drayteks for years - since the days of 8Mbps ADSL ! 😉

I missed a call today from the BT case handler for my ombudsman case - whilst I was at work. They dont take inbound calls, so I guess she will try again tomorrow.

This evening I've done some phoning around to other providers.

I found out that Virgin Media don’t do routine reboots on their routers - and for their Landline service they do a VoIP service and they can provide a "traditional backup line" that isn’t reliant on the router should there be a power cut or a router failure. 

The Virgin backup line is provided at "no extra cost". I was told they have designed this landline service to deal with requirements from Care System Alarms and they have designed in the resilience requirements. They seem to have thought about it.

The Virgin Media contact centre representative didn’t seem to be surprised I was a BT customer looking for alternatives. That said, she wasn’t really aware of the specific reason why (i.e., the unreliable router / Smart Hub 2).

Couldn’t get a straight answer out of Sky - who call their VoIP service "Sky Internet Calls". I did get put through to an offshore / outsourced team who were just focused on a sale but didn’t give any convincing and clear answer about their VoIP service.

I noticed that EE/BT have brought out two new routers:-

(1) The EE/BT SH20A (2023) which is effectively a Smart Hub 2 in a different plastic case (Wow!). Same SOC, motherboard and firmware. Different clothes 😞

(2) and a Smart Hub 3 (also called EE Smart Hub Plus) which claims the “EE Smart Hub Plus will run on a new firmware platform built by EE”. Its Wi-Fi 6 as well.

I don’t care about the plastic case for the SH20A – but I wonder if the EE Smart Hub Plus has no random reboots / no memory leaks. Have they built a more reliable router? Could be too late before I find out.

[StuartHK]

Have you looked at Virgin’s forum?

OK, people only post to complain, (usually), but the shear volume of complaints is telling.  Makes this forum look quiet.

[stevie_b1]

So, the ombudsman investigation has happened, and they have found in the favour of BT.

That said, they have asked that I take the complaint up with BT again! Apparently BT's ombudsman complaint team don't actually look at complaints - they just upload evidence if they have any. 

So, the ombudsman service has now asked that I send my complaint to philip jansen asking them to investigate for a final time, giving them 28 days. If they do not successfully resolve, then I am told I need to go back to the ombudsman after that.

So after BT doing the big fob-off of my previous two previous complaints and referring me to the ombudsman service, the ombudsman service is now asking me to complain back at BT again!!!

I have explained to ombudsman case handler that my issue is NOT with: (1) the Fibre optic cable, (2) the Nokia ONT, (3) the backend Infrastructure of Broadband or Digital Voice, (4) the power within my house.

The issue - quite clearly is around the BT provided Router (Smart Hub 2) and the flaky software and/or management of it. 

I have also explained that on the BT complaints/ticket system, I cannot upload router logs, but I was assuming that BT would look at router logs themselves. Personally, I dont think BT are doing that, so I've been advised to send attachments to the CEO complaints team via email. 

It does seem that the ombudsman is a bit soft on BT because they need to decommission the copper system - but I will try this last attempt with the CEO complaints people and go from there.