Digital Voice - How to connect existing phones

[licquorice]

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@Bob1001 wrote:

 (probably have everything I need in my GPO Gladstone bag)

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😄 I've still got mine as well.

[Paul608085]

"GPO Gladstone Bag"

Were they the brown leather ones that you would keep your "81s" and "butt" in?  😀

[Bob1001]

@Paul608085  That is the one, I have my ratchet & tongs in mine. I still use my 81s.

When I jumped through the "window of opportunity" MERS I bought the contents of my office (a computer, mobile phone, etc etc) and all the tools in my possession for £5, Best deal ever  from BT.

[Paul608085]

I don't remember "ratchet & tongs" - what were they? (I joined BT in 1981, so maybe from before then?).

[Bob1001]

@Paul608085  They were used for tensioning OH bare copper (well cadmium copper) wires. I got them as part of the kit when I joined in 1961 as a Y2YC and progressed downhill from there.

[licquorice]

Have you still got your centre twist and some copper sleeves as well?

[Bob1001]

@licquoriceYes and probably enough kit to maintain a CB, CBS, Strowger, crossbar or TXE2 exchange and a heap of thermistors and heat  coils, I still have a couple of reels of propper lead solder.

My best job was mixed maintenance where I had a complete patch, subscribers plus the exchange the only thing I did not dabble with was underground although I did do the course on joining fibre optic cable, and made a nice lamp using a cable off cut.

[Ribblelancs]

good to read some humour.

I'm on to a call centre for help, currently waitng44 mins, 56 mins predicted.....don't know how a DV handset would handle this. It's good old cordless phone in use, plugged in to SH2.

[milleniumaire]

Just solved this issue, no thanks to the lack of support from BT, by purchasing and installing a mini telephone socket under the BT master, then disconnecting the extension cables from the BT master and connecting them into the new mini telephone socket.  A hole was drilled through the wall and the extension cable fed through to the mini socket.

A standard male to male cable telephone was used to plug the BT Smart Hub into the new extension mini socket.

All extensions in the house are now working again with Digital Voice.

BT offered a wireless adapter but for various reasons this isn't suitable for my setup.  I know BT developed a replacement faceplate (VOIP reinjection faceplate) but for whatever reason they decided not to make this available.  For me and many others in my position, this would have made things so much easier as it would simply have involved replacing the master socket faceplate.  I suspect money is more important than service to BT!

[iniltous]

Your extension sockets and phones were never your provider responsibility, even if 30 or 40 years ago ‘BT’ installed them , you pay nothing to BT for them , so they are your responsibility…..BT do provide the means to use DV either by using a DV adapter or DV ( DECT ) handsets .

Sky , Vodafone and others have a similar setup ( voice delivered from the router ) and in time every broadband customer that wants telephony  will use the router or an ATA , rendering extension sockets redundant without some additional work …those companies provide no assistance whatsoever, so although you feel badly treated by BT , it would be worse if you were a customer of someone else .