Caller Line ID and other Digital Voice install issues

[Peter032]

What we thought was going to be a simple upgrade to Full Fibre and Digital Voice, “plugging the phones into the hub”, turned into a bit of a challenge, The full story is as below, but in summary, here are the key points:

1) If you have been told that your Digital Voice is live, but it does not appear to be configured on the Smart Hub 2, try a factory reset of the hub from the browser interface.

2) If you have a simple telephone system, with no local directory lookups on phones and no Digital Voice phones, you can probably happily plug your existing phones into the Smart Hub 2.

3) If you have a phone that looks up numbers from a local memory (eg a BT Decor 2500), you may need to use a Digital Voice Adapter rather than the socket on the back of the Hub, otherwise you may get “Unavailable” as the name of all callers.

4) If you have both a Digital Voice Phone and more conventional extensions, using the Digital Voice Adapter for your conventional phones rather that the socket on the back of the Hub will help the interoperability of all phones.

5) The Digital Voice Adapter may not have enough power to run some ringers.

NB I am aware that the use of the Digital Voice Adapter may present a challenge if you need battery backup for your line.

My requests to BT:

1) Why can the telephone socket on the back of the hub not behave like a standard landline, rather than giving “Unavailable” for the caller’s name instead of staying silent where there is none.

2) Some technical documentation please on your devices rather than just user guides – this forum seems to be full of people learning what actually works the hard way.

The full story:

We decided to make the move to full fibre, mainly because we wanted to avoid the increase in price if we stuck with FTTC and landline now that full fibre is available in our street. As part of this we therefore needed to migrate our landline to some form of digital (VOIP) solution and Digital Voice seemed like the line of least resistance – or so we thought…

We have been very happy with the WiFi coverage of the Smart Hub, and the replacement Smart Hub 2 appears even better. Installing that ourselves ahead of the fibre install and thinking through where we wanted the fibre termination made the FTTP install a very smooth process. We thought the engineer would also assist with Digital Voice but it turns out that happens later in the day and that this is very much a self-install process, and not as bug-free as we had hoped!

BT had made a mess with the original orders, and as a result we had received both a Digital Voice Adapter and an Essential Phone as recompense, which (in the absence of any technical documentation from BT) has been very helpful in working out what works!

We received a text notification that Digital Voice was active, but the Essential Phone would not register to the Hub. When you looked on the web interface to the hub, the “phone” section still said it was not configured. After browsing these forums, I tried a restart of the Hub to no effect, and then a factory reset from the browser interface. The factory reset woke it up and we could now connect the Essential Phone and connect our existing phones via the telephone socket on the back of the Hub.

But, we have a BT Decor 2500 as our main phone, and it takes the Caller Line ID and looks it up from its local memory to show you the name of who is calling. Once connected to the Smart Hub it gave “Unavailable” as the name of every caller. After much investigation and learning about Caller Name as well as Caller Line presentation, it appears that the information from the port on the back of the Smart Hub gives out “Unavailable” as the name (see https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-phone-including-Digital/SH2-DV-Gigaset-CNIP-Unavailable/td-p/227925...from @VeteranISPUser ), and the Decor 2500 presented that instead of the local look up. Why has BT chosen to do this out of this socket, rather than provide what used to be provided down a copper line, and why is there no documentation of this fact??

Eventually I tried using the Digital Voice Adapter. I discovered that if you have stored numbers from the Essential Phone (which are saved on the Hub), then the names of these will be presented on the Decor 2500 from the Hub. If you have not (i.e. you just had a Digital Voice Adapter and no Digital phone) then only the callers number is presented down the line and the Decor 2500 will work as previously – i.e. present the number, and the caller’s name if in its local directory. A solution for us (as long as we always update the directory on hub and Decor 2500 simultaneously).

But, we have a small real bell, and whilst the connection on the back of the Hub happily rang this, the Digital Voice Adapter will not. Again BT – why is there no documentation on the REN capability of Hub or Adapter? The solution for us – plug the bell into the back of the Hub, leaving the phones plugged into the Adapter.

A further advantage of having the phones via the Adapter, is that we can now hand calls over between the old phones (we have two plugged into the one Adapter) and the Essential Digital Phone, almost as if they were simple wired extensions on the same line as before. The socket on the back of the Hub appears to be a law unto itself (again documentation would be helpful), whereas the Adapter is another device on the DECT system within the hub and therefore recognised by the Digital Phone.

We now therefore have a solution that should hopefully last us for the duration of our contract (even if the electricity for number of things now plugged in may negate some of the increase of price were avoiding!), but we will obviously watch the market over the next two years to see how the full digital switchover occurs and if BT improve their offering (from just two fully compatible phones and one adapter, no big button phones, no remote access to call diversion etc.) or if other domestic VOIP providers present a better offering.

[jac_95]

Hi Peter032,

Thanks for the post and welcome to the Community.

This is an automated response as I can see you have a question about BT’s Digital Voice service. Rather than waiting for a response from the Community, you may find an answer to your question by using the search bar on the Community homepage. We also have a thread that contains a wealth of info related to BT’s Digital Voice, click this link to take a look, Digital Voice FAQs.

To learn more about the nationwide change to this Internet based voice service visit landlinesgo.digital

If you have already looked for the answer to your question and have not found anything that can help, then please ignore this message. One of our Community members will be along shortly to help you further.