Digital Voice

[peppercorn_cottage]

Digital Voice: we live in two cottages now joined which make an L shape. The study/office with router and desktop etc. is on the ground floor at one end of the L, the main bedroom on the first floor at the other end of the L. The bedside phone there is crucial – we are both elderly and have some mobility problems. We have had 3 visits by engineers and now have 3 discs, but still no reliable phone in the bedroom – it usually doesn’t ring. The hall (downstairs) is at the corner of the L half way. between the bedroom and the study and there is a phone there. If this phone rings we cannot get downstairs quickly enough and if we are nearby and pick it up, it sometimes turns to red and can also break up. What I find difficult to credit is that, with plug-ins I can get a good internet signal all over the house but digital voice is hopeless. Is it that BT doesn’t want to use someone else’s technology? It seems an age since I was having to use an antenna balanced on a worktop to send the router signal to the kitchen in the other arm of the L To do all this, of course, we are paying more to BT. It very much looks that we are being used as guinea pigs by BT.

My question is: if I were to get another router and attach the bedroom phone to it, can it work or is having 2 routers on the same ‘system’ a no no.

[imjolly · Accepted solution]

BT digital voice connects to the BTSh2 using DECT not wifi so the disc are not helping your phone connection  you can phone CS and ask for a free DV adapter which you plug in to a power socket and then connect a phone to the adapter  phone CS 03301234150 and request free adapter

you can also  re-enable your existing phone sockets but you probably need so assistance as requires lot bending up and down    https://community.bt.com/t5/Archive-Staging/Correct-way-to-enable-all-BT-sockets-after-Digital-Voice...

[WSH]

As imjolly said, the Digital Voice (DV) phones don’t use Wi-Fi.  They use DECT, the same as traditional cordless phones.  If it is on DECT, I’m surprised the phone doesn’t ring at all.

Are these phones supplied by BT for DV?  If so, the batteries supplied are notoriously unreliable, so a new set of batteries may fix it.

If they are traditional cordless, I take it the base station is plugged into the green socket of the back of the Smart Hub 2 (SH2).  If so, perhaps using an extension lead to reposition the base station might help.  Presumably, if you could move it to where you had it before it should fix the problem.

Do you have wired extensions to the bedroom?  If so those extensions can be rewired to connect them to the green socket on the back of the SH2, making the extensions live again.