Having a copper wire coming into our house from a pole across the road which has served us well (mostly) for over 40 years it looks as if we are heading to a connection to a buried new buried fibre which is now connecting two neighbours who have asked for the new-fangled magic light speaking tube system.
My take on all of the above is :- I am paying for a phone service and will continue to do so and all I ask is for the phone service supplier is to leave me with the same service as I currently have and if that means they will have to send in their trained monkey to do the necessary whatevers they need to do to make my phones and broadband work.
Changing to a fibre service is their choice for their own financial benefit so I would expect that it will all be done by them and them supplying anything necessary to leave me in the same position as I am currently at no cost to me, the customer and bill payer
leave me with the same service as I currently have
This will all revolve around the definition of the service you have. Is it
1) The ability to make voice calls on a phone, or DECT base station plugged into a single master socket.
2) As. above, but for multiple sockets distributed around the property.
3) 1 or 2 in the event of a widespread power failure.
4) The continued operation of a Telecare or burglar alarm system dependent on power from the copper line.
Which service definition do you think you have?
1 is what they believe. 2 needs Chris’ modification. I doubt they see that as part of the. contract. 3 is an issue, battery backup is OK for FTTP, but for FTTC if the outage encompasses the cabinet, local battery backup is not going to help.
4 is down to the alarm provider. BT have been pushing the issue since 2017, did your alarm provider do anything?
This will all revolve around the definition of the service you have. Is it
1) The ability to make voice calls on a phone, or DECT base station plugged into a single master socket.
2) As. above, but for multiple sockets distributed around the property.
3) 1 or 2 in the event of a widespread power failure.
4) The continued operation of a Telecare or burglar alarm system dependent on power from the copper line.
The current copper service to the majority of premises encompasses all of the above and these are the services apart from option 2 which is a personal option.
I do not see why any customer should have to pay for replacement equipment simply to return them to a working phone service.
I do not see why any customer should have to pay for replacement equipment simply to return them to a working phone service.
If the ISP involved does not offer a FTTP VOIP service then they will not be able to return the customer to “as before”. A change of ISP will be required. This could involve a modest up-front cost.
I have had BT FTTP for about a year and a half. The router has a normal BT phone socket on the back so you can connect your existing phoned to it. I don’t know want number or REN’s it supports but it worked with 3 reasonably modern phone connected to it. (I think modern phones have a REN number of less than one.) It also acts like a dect base station. you can register your dect phones to it but you will loose some of the functions they had on their original dect base. If you buy the digital voice handsets from BT they have some some extra functions. One of these is if you are on one call and someone else phones the other handsets ring so another person can answer that call. I think you can make two outgoing calls at the same time but I have not tried to do this. There are a few negative things. If you pick up a call on a phone connected to the socket on the router there seems to be no way to transfer the call to one of the dect phones or vice versa. As with the old phone system you can pick up another one of the wired phones and take the call on that phone. (Or have two people on the same call.) On the digital voice handsets you can join an existing call with another handset. Both the fiber modem and the router are powerd from 12 volts DC. (Each one has it’s own plug in power supply.) I don’t know if you could supply them both from the same 12 volt battery. (I suspect that youcan as they are only connected togethrt with a network cable an I think that provides isolation between them.)
I think they must be dect as I could register and use existing dect phones (After de registering them with their original dect base.) with the router. The panasonic set of 3 I have worked but most of the extra functions like calls between them did not work. I now have the Panasonic dect base unit connected to the socket on the router together wit a couple of basic phones, One of the basic phones is in my workshop which is too far away from the house for the dect phones. If i answer a call in the workshop and it is for my wife she has to pick it up on on one of the phones that are hard wired to the router.
I was thinking that since the router has a WiFi access point they might use VOIP direct from the handset, but have a DECT access point as well. In fact looking at some BT digital voice handsets they imply they are using VOIP.
My take on all of the above is :- I am paying for a phone service and will continue to do so and all I ask is for the phone service supplier is to leave me with the same service as I currently have and if that means they will have to send in their trained monkey to do the necessary whatevers they need to do to make my phones and broadband work.
…
Whilst I sympathise with Dod Mole, it’s unlikely that the phone service he is paying for includes the equipment and wiring inside his home.
The providers responsibility usually ends inside the Master Socket. It provides a layered connection. If BT detect a line fault on their side at the Internal Test Socket, they will fix, no charge. Anything that doesn’t work when plugged into the outer socket is the consumer’s responsibility. An example:
By providing a clear boundary the arrangement protects the customer from a supplier in denial, and the supplier from customers with dodgy equipment and wiring. It means BT won’t accept Dod Mole’s argument, instead pointing him at the Terms and Conditions. It’s their definition of the service that matters, not what the customer hopes it might be.
From what I’ve researched of BT’s switchover, there’s a good chance existing phones will just plug into the new SmartHub2 and ‘just work’. So don’t panic. If they don’t, either:
follow Chris Crew’s posts in this thread for a DIY fix, or
cough up for some new phones!
I’ve reached the stage of life where I would rather be left in peace. Sadly, the world marches on regardless…
Whilst I sympathise with Dod Mole, it’s unlikely that the phone service he is paying for includes the equipment and wiring inside his home.
The providers responsibility usually ends inside the Master Socket. It provides a layered connection. If BT detect a line fault on their side at the Internal Test Socket, they will fix, no charge. Anything that doesn’t work when plugged into the outer socket is the consumer’s responsibility. An example:
The phone service I pay BT for is 2 BT phones, router for internet plugged in to the BT master socket so if the phones stop working as a result of BT’s changes then I still think it is not unreasonable to expect them to return me to the situation of having 2 working telephones and an internet connection at no cost whatever to me the paying customer.
Somewhere in the small print will be a get out clause. Don’t expect ‘reasonable’ in any dealings with a big company, they can afford better lawyers than you can, and for longer