Digital Voice/ Full Fibre switch‑over - accessibility, appointment change, equipment,coordination

[JET1]

Digital Voice switch‑over – accessibility needs, appointment change, equipment and coordination : 

I am posting this message here because there is no email address or postal address available to contact BT directly, and no chat department covers all aspects - I need a written response to the issues below.

Dear BT Accessibility / Digital Voice/ Full Fibre Team,

I am writing because I have received multiple emails within seconds advising that:

• My phone service is being moved to Digital Voice
• An engineer appointment has been booked automatically
• Further emails say loan equipment is on the way

This has been arranged without discussion of my accessibility needs, so I need urgent clarification before anything proceeds.

Accessibility – very important

I am deaf and rely heavily on having working landline/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi phones for safety and access.

• I live in a three‑storey house
• I require a phone on each floor (3 phones in total)
• I need confirmation that the phones provided support:
  • Answerphone / voicemail
  • Bluetooth/Wi-Fi and connectivity with hearing aids

Please confirm whether BT will provide all three phones as a reasonable accessibility adjustment, and whether there will be any charge for these.

Hub location, sockets and extenders

• My hub sockets are currently all in use
• I will need three extension adapters for the phones
  Please confirm whether BT will supply these and if there is any charge.

Wi‑Fi and signal problems

• I have poor coverage on the ground floor, even with a BT WI‑Fi disc
• The signal drops in and out - broadband is slow
• I have no 5G mobile signal in my area, so I rely entirely on WI‑Fi for mobile calls etc.
• For this reason, the hub needs to be moved to the middle floor and be upgraded to the fastest full fibre 

Please confirm whether BT can move the hub as part of this work.

Appointment issue

The appointment that was booked needs to be moved to June, but the system does not allow booking that far ahead.

I am concerned because:

• If I cancel the appointment, it appears the entire Digital Voice upgrade will be cancelled and full fibre upgrade
• I do not want the upgrade cancelled - I simply need the date moved

Please advise how to change the appointment to mid-June without cancelling the upgrade.

One coordinated visit

Given the complexity and my accessibility needs, I need one BT‑managed service to coordinate all the following in a single, properly planned visit:

• Full Fibre / Digital Voice switch‑over
• Relocating the hub to the middle floor - this will involve working at height
• Installing and testing three accessible phones
• Ensuring WI‑Fi coverage is reliable on all floors

Please confirm how BT will coordinate this, so I am not dealing with multiple departments or repeat visits.

Costs

Please clearly confirm:

• Will BT charge for:
  • Extra phones required for accessibility?
  • Extension adapters?
  • Hub relocation?
• If there are charges, please provide exact costs in advance

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Because this is an accessibility‑related matter, I ask that this case is handled by the BT Accessibility / Digital Voice/ Full fibre support teams, and that no further automatic changes or equipment are sent until the above points are confirmed in writing.

I look forward to your clear response.

Kind regards,

[gg30340]

This is a BT residential customer to customer forum. Your post does not go to BT. The only BT staff are the forum moderators . You will be unlikely to get a BT response to your post.

However you may get advice and answers to your questions from forum members

[JET1]

Thanks for your help. I’ve been trying to get this sorted since September 2025, and it’s becoming really difficult 😐. Every service - chat, bots, phone lines, and different departments  - keeps giving me different answers, dead end advice and passing me back and forth, and I still don’t know who can actually deal with the issue/s. Any guidance would be appreciated. Even a postal or email address for the BT Customer Accessibility team would be a huge help 👍

[chrisjp]

Unfortunately, BT do not provide any facility to contact them by email. They want you to telephone them but, again unfortunately, their telephone agents are generally badly trained and, as you have found, you'll get different answers depending on which agent answers your call. And I can fully understand the difficulties you will have with telephone calls if you are hard of hearing.
There is, or at least was, a Chat function which I have successfully used in the past, but its availability seems to be a bit erratic. When logged into your account, sometimes a Chat box pops up, sometimes it doesn't, but it's worth keep looking out for it.
One think you should seek to clarify - are you just being converted to Digital Voice (DV) or are you being converted to DV and Full Fibre broadband (Fibre to the Premises (FTTP))? It's a common misconception the DV requires FTTP - it doesn't, DV will work perfectly well over ANY broadband connection. Just being converted to DV doesn't require an engineer visit, but conversion to FTTP does.
Regarding your phones on three floors, DV will make your existing master phone socket redundant and instead there will be a phone socket on the back of the new hub (Smarthub2) which BT will supply to you. You can plug one phone into this. For the other floors (or anywhere else) you'll need what BT confusingly call "adapters". These are effectively portable phone sockets that plug into the mains electricity and you plug your phones into them. They connect to the SmartHub2 via radio (not via WiFi but instead via "DECT"). You can one of these free from BT, any more you have to pay for - about £20 each.
I know I haven't answered all your questions, but I hope what I've said is helpful.

[gg30340]

Have a look at this helpful post put together by @licquorice

Solved: Digital Voice FAQs - BT Community

[JET1]

Thank you both for such a detailed and helpful reply, and for including clear links. I genuinely appreciate the time you’ve taken – your explanation has been far more useful than anything I’ve received directly from BT.

Your comments about BT’s limited written contact and inconsistent telephone support resonate strongly with me. As someone who is hard of hearing, phone calls are difficult, and receiving different answers from different agents has been frustrating and stressful. Meaningful written contact with BT remains hard to obtain, and the online chat option appears unreliable.

I’m very grateful for your clear explanation/ Links about Digital Voice, particularly around the Smart Hub 2, DECT, adapters and using phones across multiple floors. Describing the adapters as “portable phone sockets” finally made BT’s terminology understandable. The additional details about 1571, simultaneous calls, handset storage and backup limitations were especially helpful.

That said, I still have practical concerns. My Smart Hub 2 is five or six years old and does not appear to have a green phone socket. All LAN ports are already in use, and I rely heavily on stable and fast connectivity. I’ve also invested significantly in high‑quality, accessibility‑focused phone handsets, and I’m concerned that moving to Digital Voice could compromise compatibility or sound quality.

As a photographer working with large files and cloud‑based tools, I want to upgrade to Full Fibre. However, I’ve been told this is not possible unless I also move to Digital Voice. What makes this difficult is the lack of clear, joined‑up information: the Full Fibre and Digital Voice teams refer me to each other, and I’ve still not been given clear details about costs, equipment, or engineering visits, despite requesting full quotations in advance -  I want confidence that any change will properly support my setup and accessibility needs.

Finally, I would appreciate guidance on a clear written contact point (email or postal address), and details of the appropriate complaint escalation route or ombudsman/ADR scheme, from anyone.

Thank you again for your time and assistance – it has been very much appreciated.

Kind regards,

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[chrisjp]

If you can, and want, to move to FTTP then, yes, BT & Openreach normally also require you to move to digital voice. But the opposite is not true - you can be moved to digital voice without having to go to FTTP.
However, if FTTP is available to you and you want it for its available higher broadband speeds, then you'll have to accept DV and also an Openreach (or their contractor) technician visit to you house, during which they'll install a box on the outside of your house and another box (Optical Network Terminator or "ONT") inside your house to which your SmartHub 2 will be connected by ethernet cable, and which will also require a power supply, so it has to be located reasonably near an electricity socket. The technician will try to accomodate your wishes as to where the ONT should be located but this will be limited by feasibility and the time he/she is allocated to complete the job.
Some technicians are more accomodating than others so, to some extent, what you end up with is a little bit dependent on chance

[JET1]

Thank you so much chrisjp