Digital Voice Conversion Problem

[Victor_Delta]

After lots of contradictory information from BT, over the last few months, about whether and when my landline would be converted to digital voice, I finally received a standard email about 10 days ago saying it would be converted yesterday, 2nd June. I waited all day for my landline dial tone to go but it didn't.

Around 5pm, I phoned BT to ask what was happening and was told it could take till midnight to fully convert, but was assured that it would definitely happen that day.

Then at about 7.30pm yesterday evening, I received an email from BT saying "Over the next 48 hours, we'll set up your Digital Voice service. "

So I guess my question is: having expected everything to happen yesterday, does it often actually take several days to convert lines to digital voice?

PS Landline still working as normal at the moment, but should mention that dial tone is now also present on the green router socket so something is happening (but can't yet make or receive calls that way)!

[jac_95]

Hi Victor_Delta,

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.

Got some questions or want to learn more about BT’s Digital Voice rollout? BT are running localised events as part of the regional rollout of Digital Voice - Click here to view the Digital Voice events

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.

[imjolly]

if you have phone connected to green socket on back of BT hub and you have a dial tone that would suggest DV is active.  you can check by going to hub manager enter 192.168.1.254 in address bar and open hub manager and you should see your phone number and whether active or not

[Victor_Delta]

Thanks. Yes the status is shown as 'Service Ready'.

So do you know how long it may take to complete the conversion, and whether several days is typical?

[imjolly]

have you tried restarting the BT router and see if that helps as it seemed to help on previous forum posts

[WSH]

Yes, a reboot seems to be required and it doesn't say that anywhere.

As I understanding, & going from when mine was done, they initially assign a temproary number and once it's working properly, your number is moved across.

[Victor_Delta]

Rebooted the rooter and the DV status still shows as 'Service Ready'.

However, the main issue is that my existing landline is still connected as before. Is that part of the transfer a keyboard job, or does it require, for example, my line to be rejumpered in the exchange? Or both?!

[jac_95]

@Victor_Delta 

Once moved off the PSTN to BT Digital Voice your old phone service via the PSTN may still have a dial tone until work at the exchange is done. The PSTN line however may be allocated a temporary holding number but may not be usable to make calls once the Digital Voice service is activated.

Essentially the decommissioning of the PSTN line requires engineering work to be done at the exchange whereas the migration to Digital Voice is automated.

[Victor_Delta]

Thanks. Your reply suggests this may take a few days, especially if the exchange is usually unmanned.

It’s a shame the info about DV conversion doesn't make this clear as it must lead to considerable customer disappointment (and phone queries). I certainly thought everything would be completed within a couple of hours, or a day at most. It’s all about managing customers’ expectations. 

[jac_95]

@Victor_Delta 

In terms of the move to digital voice that is usually within the 24hours of the date given to you but may take 48 hours in some cases. Number porting process can be one of the reasons why it's taking longer than 24 hours. Also your hub needs to be pushed a configuration file and configures on backend resources needs to be updated. (This is why a reboot can sometimes speed things up as it triggers that refresh of configuration of the hub )

Is your phone service via Digital Voice working?

The disconnection of the PSTN line is a secondary process. In summary, once moved to Digital Voice you need to connect your phone handset to either the phone port on the back of the supplied smart hub or via a digital voice adapter and this should allow you to make calls and receive calls once the service is ready.

From the customers perspective that is all they need to worry about, as for then decommissioning the PSTN service that's a more manual process but shouldn't need the customer to know or worry about.