Using Full Fibre 100 with third-party router and Digital Voice

[KMKM]

Hi,

We are moving home and in the new property we’ve ordered full fibre broadband and it comes with digital voice home phone.  In our current house we don’t use the BT HomeHub as we run our own email and web servers and prefer to use a DrayTek router for the flexibility it offers.  When ordering the new package the person we spoke to assured me that we could still use an external router with full Fibre broadband and wouldn’t need to use the Smart Hub 2.  Hopefully this is correct information.  Could anyone confirm this is the case?

I’ve now just received a follow-up email about Digital Voice.  In the instructions it says I’d need to use BT’s latest Smart Hub for Digital Voice to work.  Which is obviously a concern if I won’t be using the Smart Hub.  So is this simply too restrictive a statement and I can plug the Digital Voice handsets into a third party router such as the DrayTek Vigor 2865?  Or is Digital Voice going to be useless to me and I should cancel this part of the subscription?

I tried asking BT's online chat about this, but they just wanted to arrange for someone to visit the property, which seemed pointless...

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

@KMKM 

Welcome to this user forum for BT Retail phone and broadband customers.

Digital Voice only works with the Smart Hub 2, nothing else can be used.

See https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-phone-including-Digital/Digital-Voice-FAQs/td-p/2207485

[rbz5416]

DV only works with the SH2.

Although if you're running web servers maybe you should be looking at a business package?

[Keith_Beddoe]

@KMKM 

As @rbz5416  has said, you really need a BT Business service, that does allow IP phones to be used via their Cloud Voice service.

If you are operating a business, then that is not permitted on a residential account anyway.

[KMKM]

We aren't running a business, we just run a mail server for our family emails, and a web server for our photo albums etc.  So a business package would be complete overkill for our use.  And I presume the Smart Hub 2 can't be plugged into a third-party router in some way to get the best of both worlds?  If not, it sounds like we'll have to cancel the Digital Voice part of the order.  What about the broadband part?  Could someone please confirm that using the BT Full Fibre 100 package with a third-party router and no Smart Hub 2 works OK?

Thanks.

[licquorice]

Yes, you can use a third party router without a Smart Hub for broadband only. You can then just get a third party VoIP package if you wish to have Voice capability.

[KMKM]

Excellent, that's good to know.  I wasn't bothered about the VoIP part anyway.  It was just being bundled in with the fibre broadband order as BT seems to be pushing Digital Voice rather than copper landlines.

[Keith_Beddoe]

The analogue phone service is closing down in 2025.

[rbz5416]

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@KMKMwrote:

And I presume the Smart Hub 2 can't be plugged into a third-party router in some way to get the best of both worlds? 

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You can only do it the other way round, so the SH2 is the primary router. As it has no bridge mode I wouldn't be surprised if there were then issues getting your servers visible to the outside world through two boxes. But there's a 14 day cooling off period so you should be able to give it a try & cancel DV if no joy. Or if it's being bundled at no cost, just not use it.

[KMKM]

Hopefully by then they will offer a way for people to use third-party routers with their offerings.  Because forcing everyone to use BT routers seems crazy, particularly when they aren't particularly good.  If the worst comes to the worst we'll just have to use mobile phones instead of landlines at that point.