I have just had ZEN FTTP installed with a 7530. I am using voipfone.com for my voip service. It was a bit fiddly configuring in the FritzBox! but it seems to work as above. Plugged my Panasonic DECT base station into the POTS port on the FritzBox! and very surprised its all fine.
I chose voipfone after recommendations on here. Its a true SIP service so I can pick up calls when away from home...
Dave
sorry to be picky but you've quoted article 106(3) from the EU Directive
2018/1972. If dealing with a provider the authority is Ofcom's General Condition 7.6:-C7.6 All Regulated Providers shall ensure that: (a) they provide Number Portability on reasonable terms and conditions to any Switching Customer who so requests; (b) they provide Number Portability for a minimum of one month after the date of termination by the Switching Customer of the contract for the provision of the Relevant Communications Service(s), unless the Switching Customer expressly agrees otherwise at the point when they terminate the contract; and (c) no direct charges are applied to the Switching Customer for the provision of Number Portability.
I tend to agree. Much depends on what Ofcom mean by "the contract for the provision of the Relevant Communications Service(s)". But IMLE there is /one/ contract for broadband and phone. So it's not possible to cancel just the phone to earn the /right/ to port the number.
I did it the other way round. I ordered new broadband provision, so I had both Plusnet (FTTC) and ZEN (FTTC) internet for a week.
Then I applied for a port of my phone number to voipfone. They warned me my broadband would then be ceased and it would take a week. They set me up with an account with a voip number (056) so I could check things worked.
On the designated day my old line stopped receiving calls. I had added it as an outbound number the day before. it now started receiving calls.
If you want to go big-bang on fibre it allows you to recover your number
Dave
Not sure, but I spose there is nothing stopping us writing one :-)
(in the past I have done it with a 4G USB dongle on a laptop. Put that on a windowsill upstairs where it could see some signal, and then bridged the dongle's network adaptor with the laptop's ethernet, and piped that back down to my main router. Fed that into its ethernet WAN connection and that gave full wired and wireless connectivity back to the whole house. However I found that USB dongle was flakey and tended to overheat and give up after any intensive traffic. So last time I needed to do it, I used a slightly more sophisticated ZTE USB device that can also create its own wifi hot spot. In this case I turned off most of its extra bits, plugged it into a raspberry Pi3b which sees it as a virtual ethernet network interface. From there I could do the same trick feeding it back to my router)
Depends on your deal/package. Last time I needed to do it (local farmer decided to flail our fibre at the same time as doing a hedge up the road!) I used a giffgaff sim in my 4G dongle / router widget, and bought an "unlimited data" goodie bag for it for the month.
Ghostery can help tame some of those tendencies!
At risk of sounding like a python sketch - my ADSL does not even get that. Currently synced at 2.2 Mbps. There was a time that two of those behind a load balancer was all we could get here!
No doubt there will be a range of different final connection measures used for more "difficult" installs - but I expect they will want to get away from copper pairs in the last mile ASAP.
If you select digital voice with Zen I found the following
A quick call to their customer (technical) service line was answered quickly and my request for digital voice was set in motion within a few minutes.
I had no problems porting my existing land line number.
It is a new broadband/voice 18 months contract. If you are on a rolling
1 month contract you will lose the price guaranteed for life. Zen no longer offer this for 'new' contracts.It took 3 weeks before I was switched over. You will get an email giving the date. In my case the changeover started happening at midnight but the router was not fully configured (by Zen) until a hour or two later. You will lose your internet connection perhaps a couple of times during this period as your router reboots. My landline connection for phone was disabled by 6am.
If your internet FTTC is still via copper then you may/will still be paying a line rental charge. If you have fibre already down your street just check the cost as it may be comparable to your existing charges (plus the £6) digital voice call package. City fibre laid their cables outside my house last year but I still have copper for my broadband. I will probably upgrade after my summer holidays.
The costs for FTTP upgrade are detailed in the (beta) Customer Portal
I hope that telephone numbers can continuously be dialled blind without a "send" (aka green button) action being necessary.
And that there is still a dial tone?
If any of that changes, then a lot of folks are not going to be happy.
Thanks - that's very informative.
One thing that isn't covered adequately, or else I failed to understand it, is what you need to do when there are multiple phone sockets around the house. Quite a lot of homes will be like ourswith sockets in other rooms (bedroom, home office, etc) all wired up in some way, lost in the mists of time, to the current BT master socket. If the existing master socket is disconnected and the newly provided router just provides a single phone socket then these extension sockets will need to be wired up to it somehow. I think I could work out how to do that, but it might require quite a bit of rummaging around the wiring buried in the walls/floors and perhaps even some plugs/sockets that I don't currently have. But a lot of consumers won't have a clue how to do that.
I'm surprised that answerphones use silence as the trigger to stop recording. I'd expect the recording-stop signal to be the line changing state from call-in-progress to on-hook. Or can the phone not distinguish between the two states by monitoring voltage levels?
I did correct my post minutes after posting it. The caller hanging up was a continuous tone whereas now its a beep beep tone.
In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, Clive Page snipped-for-privacy@page2.eu writes
Sounds like a slightly larger version of the problem that I had when I moved to VOIP.
I upgraded my router to one with an ATA socket. I then put in a new phone wall socket adjacent to the router, and connected that socket to the domestic phone network. Once the switch over from POTS to VOIP was made, I disconnected the wiring between the master socket face plate and the domestic network, then plugged the new socket into the ATA socket on the router. I've got one DECT base station and two "normal" handsets, and they all work, the only quirk being that one of the handsets doesn't ring when there is an incoming call, it may or may not be a coincidence that it is the first phone in from the router.
Adrian
With our Virgin router, not only do our DECT phones work with the master base station plugged into it, but so does our (about) 80 year-old, pulse-dialling, rotary phone.
Maybe the intention is you do the xDSL to FTTC upgrade first, which "parks" rather than "ceases" the PSTN number, they you have a month to "pickup" the old number and port it, rather than BT saying sorry your old number is gone?
Because OFCOM do the same ...
Well of course all that works. My wife can't tell the difference.
I suggest 99% of people won't notice the difference.
I do because I know whats going on.
As for the "send" button I suggest a large majority of people have DECT cordless phones and treat them as if they have a send key.
So type the number and then hit the "off hook" button which then dials the number. That way if you make a mistake you can edit the number..
Dave
It probably should be covered, but generally it shouldn't be a problem. If its a modern "split front" master socket all then all the internal wiring should terminate on the removable plate and should remain connected after BT remove their service. It would probably be best practice to replace this with a standard secondary face plate but I don't think this is necessary.
You just then need a "back to back" patch lead from your router/ata into any phone socket and the rest should work. Available from Amazon.
You should make sure BT have ceased the service before doing this. They often leave a signal on the line. If so thats all thats needed.
Dave
Position on the cables should not matter. Its a bus so everything internal is in common. If anything devices further from the router are likely to have issues.
Does it requires a high voltage ring signal. Does it work when plugged directly in the router?
If it doesn't your router isn't generating the necessary ring voltage.
If it does then you have a wiring fault and pin 3 is discontinuous at some point.
Dave
But a Directive does not have force in a member State. As Ofcom say "Member States have ...to transpose the EECC into national law". And in doing so they can (and the UK often did) go further ("gold plating"). So it's the GC that counts.
A solution for some people would be a BT Digital Voice adapter. It's plugged in to a 13A socket and the extensions plugged into that rather than the master socket. BT were offering them free in place of the free phones.
Did they have to drill extra holes etc for the extra line?
I would ordinarily be fine with a bit of overlap, but where the cable comes up in the middle of the ground floor concrete slab, there's no way to run another line. Assuming the cable is single pair, that means digging up a new trench from the street for the wire and finding a new place for a master socket.
Which would be fine if it's FTTP (since it's going to need to happen sooner or later anyway), but a lot of disruption for only a week's service.
Theo
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