BT digital 'upgrade' - no landline

[Derek Smith]

Re: Digital Voice phones from EE.

The damned thing went into sync mode yesterday and I got onto their messaging system where I had plans of upgrading my complaint if it wasn't dealt with. I listed my faults on Word every time, and this time I pasted it into the message system. The operator told me an engineer would call round today between 2 and 4. At 3pm he came round, sourced the problem, one he had not seen before, and said I required a new router. I said it was irritating not to have a phone and showed me on the router where I could plug a landline in. It was covered by a blanking sticker.

Digital Voice is working again but it often does this just to kid me it's working before it expires mid-conversation. I'll have to wait for the new router, but, apart from that, I'm back up and running with a landline, but only for 6 months, when it will go dead.

Once I got over to them the repetitive nature of the fault, they sent an engineer within 24 hours. So maybe a fault on my behalf.

He rebooted the system, and the internet seems sharper and quicker. I'll test speeds when I can be bothered, but the download speed was always well within the promised limits. The new router is set up for full optical and I'm told there is likely to be an increase in speed that I will notice.

No charge for the new router, nor full optical.

[xeny]

Derek Smith said:

I said it was irritating not to have a phone

I can entirely appreciate the utility of a landline in areas with inadequate mobile signal, and similarly the necessity where a device needs to be able to "phone home" and the manufacturer hasn't been forward thinking with regard to enabling this over the Internet or a data enabled SIM.

However, to be honest, outside those scenarios I would suggest landlines are no longer worth the trouble, especially as the suppliers appear to be voting with their feet, showing remarkably little interest in provisioning them effectively and reliably as opposed to provisioning a data connection.

Looking at colleagues in their 40s and younger, they uniformly have a mobile, broadband for data and no landline phone. As the population ages, wanting a landline is going to be even more of a minority sport excepting the reasons in my first paragraph, and hopefully improvements to infrastructure and domestic device updates will gradually remove them.

The landline is dead, it just hasn't hit the floor yet.

[Derek Smith]

xeny said:

I can entirely appreciate the utility of a landline in areas with inadequate mobile signal, and similarly the necessity where a device needs to be able to "phone home" and the manufacturer hasn't been forward thinking with regard to enabling this over the Internet or a data enabled SIM.

However, to be honest, outside those scenarios I would suggest landlines are no longer worth the trouble, especially as the suppliers appear to be voting with their feet, showing remarkably little interest in provisioning them effectively and reliably as opposed to provisioning a data connection.

Looking at colleagues in their 40s and younger, they uniformly have a mobile, broadband for data and no landline phone. As the population ages, wanting a landline is going to be even more of a minority sport excepting the reasons in my first paragraph, and hopefully improvements to infrastructure and domestic device updates will gradually remove them.

The landline is dead, it just hasn't hit the floor yet.

I've got a mobile, in fact two have come with EE, one for my wife. We use landline for those calls that are for both/either of us. We thought of getting another 'community' mobile to leave in the house, but that came out dearer on the deal I got from EE. It comes with a back-up should the mobile towers drop out. It's happened once in 12 years here, but it worries my wife, and me to an extent.

When people phone the house, whatever their age, it's just a number they dial. Seems having the choice of two methods of contact seems a good idea to me. When it is dead, I'll do something else. Seems reasonable to me, and at no extra cost.

[babelfish]

Derek Smith said:

He rebooted the system

The entire EE network or just the router?

[Derek Smith]

babelfish said:

Derek Smith said:

He rebooted the system

The entire EE network or just the router?

Difficult to tell.

I haven't had much cause to call out BT/EE engineers since I've been with them, but they've always listened to the symptoms and then gone through the whole system even after they've worked out what the problem I've complained about is and have solved it. I've been impressed each time. There calltakers suffer in comparison, and they go through the solutions in their list that I have tried twice without result.

One rather sad aspect was the person at the other end of the messaging system BT use for complaints. I explained the problem, did what 'she' (the name given seemed female) suggested, all without result. At the end of the call. 17 mins and some seconds, I thanked her for her help and said goodbye. In reply she thanked me for being so patient and polite on the messaging , saying that it made her job so much more enjoyable and pleasant.

For those who know me from my posts on here, you will probably agree that for me to be the highlight of anyone's day shows that overall, her day must be appalling. Day after day. Every day, and probably for a pittance.

[Lucas Ayde]

Strange that BT customers seem to be having so many problems with this service.

It's not like this is new tech for them - wayyyy back around 2006/7 when I first got BT broadband with a whopping 'up to 8 megabits' down (more like 3-4 in reality) and an utterly awful BT Hub, even then they were offering digital voice (as a free service).

I remember you got an additional 'digital only' number that you could use by plugging a phone handset into the hub or even via a softphone app. They dropped that functionality after a few years, a real shame as I just used the second number as a 'spam number' whenever I had to give a phone contact number. You could also use the softphone app to dial when abroad, allowing you to use your free minutes or local UK rates. Still no softphone on the current paid offering, even though it's basically just VoIP.

[Derek Smith]

Lucas Ayde said:

Strange that BT customers seem to be having so many problems with this service.

It's not like this is new tech for them - wayyyy back around 2006/7 when I first got BT broadband with a whopping 'up to 8 megabits' down (more like 3-4 in reality) and an utterly awful BT Hub, even then they were offering digital voice (as a free service).

I remember you got an additional 'digital only' number that you could use by plugging a phone handset into the hub or even via a softphone app. They dropped that functionality after a few years, a real shame as I just used the second number as a 'spam number' whenever I had to give a phone contact number. You could also use the softphone app to dial when abroad, allowing you to use your free minutes or local UK rates. Still no softphone on the current paid offering, even though it's basically just VoIP.

According to the engineer, mine was a fault with the router. He had not seen it before. They had no solution on their database. I've got a new router and DV phones coming in the week. At the moment I'm fully functional with my landline phone plugged in. But, as you suggest, this isn't cutting edge technology.

[Roderick Spode]

Update on this ongoing saga. Formal complaint now lodged with BT, who seem utterly incapable of sorting out whatever's wrong behind the scenes. The problem is there's no consistency, and every time BT are contacted it's a new person who may or may not have a clue what's happening. So far we have been told -

• it's a problem with the home hub.
• it's not a problem with the home hub.
• digital patching needs to be done to enable the home phone.
• digital patching has been done, it now need enabled in the Home Hub.
• it's been enabled in the Home Hub, but it needs activated on the account.
• BT don't actually know why it's not working, but it 's definitely a problem at our end.
• it may be a problem at their end.
• there's a fault with the VOIP adapter module and a new one will be sent out.
• they don't need the VOIP adapter.
• they can use their existing handsets.
• they need all new digital handsets.
• the existing handsets might work, but they're not sure.
• it'll all be fixed by the 25th March.
• make that the 29th March.
• formal complaint? Ooooh, definitely the 31st March.
• have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Finally spoke to a seemingly bona fide engineer via some back route phone number, who started the conversation with "how did you get this number?" but was as helpful as he could be, and more or less admitted the ongoing roll-out is a disaster, and my parents are simply the latest in a long line of thousands of customers who still don't have a home phone weeks or even months after changeover.

[FMOB]

Have you complained to the CEO yet? When I went through this process and got to the Executive Level Team I did have a named person but had I to wade through the normal complaints treacle first...

BT also getting some flack over this in the papers..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/31/di...

Edited by FMOB on Monday 1st April 11:38