The Lemon Fool

Couple of times now I've had thr following text from BT:-

Hi from BT.

This is a reminder about moving to our Digital Voice service and we want to make sure you're ready to move across.

If you're happy to switch and don't have a special service connected to your phone line like a healthcare alarm, reply READY and we'll be in touch again once we're ready to start the move.

Find out more about our Digital Voice service here: www.bt.com/digitalvoice

On both occasions when I reply as instructed it's rejected as "couldn't send message".

Is anyone else experiencing the same? If it comes to it I'll have to call their customer service but I try to avoid that sort of experience if I possibly can.

Dicky99 wrote:Couple of times now I've had thr following text from BT:-

The context is that they are trying to replace traditional phone lines with VOIP. I think this requires them to send you a modem into wich you plug your existing landline phone system. The problem is that the system will not work during a power cut.

Traditional phones don't particularly support text messaging.

Alaric wrote:

Dicky99 wrote:Couple of times now I've had thr following text from BT:-

The context is that they are trying to replace traditional phone lines with VOIP. I think this requires them to send you a modem into wich you plug your existing landline phone system. The problem is that the system will not work during a power cut.

Traditional phones don't particularly support text messaging.

I believe the VOIP hardware includes a battery to give about 1 hour of back-up

--kiloran

kiloran wrote:

Alaric wrote:
The context is that they are trying to replace traditional phone lines with VOIP. I think this requires them to send you a modem into wich you plug your existing landline phone system. The problem is that the system will not work during a power cut.

Traditional phones don't particularly support text messaging.

I believe the VOIP hardware includes a battery to give about 1 hour of back-up.

AFAIK with BT your phone just plugs into the back of their router or into a digital voice adapter. I'm not aware of either of those having batteries.

Stompa wrote:

kiloran wrote:I believe the VOIP hardware includes a battery to give about 1 hour of back-up.

AFAIK with BT your phone just plugs into the back of their router or into a digital voice adapter. I'm not aware of either of those having batteries.

Hmm, looks like you are right. I could have sworn I read somewhere about a 1-hour battery back-up.

--kiloran

I don't know whether you'll need a whole new router, unless you've never had a broadband connecton before, but my Zen switchover was straightforward, and the only thing I needed was a short patch cable (cat5, I think) with a male plug at either end. (Sent in the post by Zen, although I had a few in my drawer.)

One end of the cable goes into the router, the other end goes into the base station of your cordless phone, and disconnect the old analogue cable that you don't need any more, and that's it. My phone was offline for a couple of hours during the switchover, but no probs. Totally peasy.

The https://www.bt.com/broadband/digital-vo ... gitalvoice link has details at the end of how to get a battery backup, etc.

BJ

Stompa wrote:

kiloran wrote:I believe the VOIP hardware includes a battery to give about 1 hour of back-up.

AFAIK with BT your phone just plugs into the back of their router or into a digital voice adapter. I'm not aware of either of those having batteries.

I run my BT router and phone base station from a UPS. It lasts about six hours when we get a power cut. We do get power cuts since we live in an area with old overhead power lines which are susceptible to faults caused by squirrels, birds etc.....

Dicky99 wrote:This is a reminder about moving to our Digital Voice service and we want to make sure you're ready to move across.

We've had digital voice for 3 months now, since we renewed our BT contract.

We received an adaptor into which we plugged our master Panasonic wireless phone, the other remote handsets work, seamlessly, as normal.

All incoming calls are free and we use our (BT/EE) mobiles for outgoing calls. It's a nice way to transition away from landlines. Our friends, dentist etc. still use our old BT phone number.

scotview wrote:We've had digital voice for 3 months now, since we renewed our BT contract.

We received an adaptor into which we plugged our master Panasonic wireless phone, the other remote handsets work, seamlessly, as normal.

All incoming calls are free and we use our (BT/EE) mobiles for outgoing calls. It's a nice way to transition away from landlines. Our friends, dentist etc. still use our old BT phone number.

I transitioned away by moving house a couple of years ago. I didn't plug a landline in, or even take note of what my number was/is. All change-of-address notifications got mobile numbers.

No noticeable downside yet.

Scott.

Sorry if this is hijacking the thread, but on a related note, I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this...

Once BT* have moved a customer onto their digital voice system (and hopefully not changed the landline number!), does this simplify the process for moving the landline number to another provider?

In our area the BT line is FTTC so we don't have very fast broadband. We have recently had fibre laid throughout the estate by Lila, and we are also in the process of having Virgin fibre on the estate too. If I want to swap to fibre for broadband I obviously cannot use the BT line for it, so would have to swap provider and I would want to discontinue the BT line, and at the same time keep our landline number.

My brain hurts trying to suss out the logistics. Can anyone possibly point me to an idiots guide to doing this or outline in simple terms what steps I'd have to take?

Thanks

*Although it's a BT line, we have our phone and broadband via Sky, just to complicate things further...