Moving from BT to EE with Advanced Digital Home Phone with Alexa

[garywood84]

I have recently moved from BT to EE for broadband and digital voice. Although EE sent me a new router and smart wifi devices, I have retained my original BT Advanced Digital Home Phones with Alexa. 

I've re-registered these phones to the new router, and so they are working to both make and receive calls.

However, the Alexa function is not working: when I press the Alexa button, or try to access Alexa Settings from the phone's main menu, I see "Alexa is not available" on the phone's display.

Anyone else experienced this issue or know of a solution, please?

[tkmskittles]

Same problems here.

moved from bt to ee and got the ee smart hub plus with bt alexa phones and i couldnt change the ringtone, alexa not working and numbers appearing twice in the call list. EE sent me a couple of new handsets but without alexa but still couldnt change the ringtone etc

[garywood84]

Sorry to hear that, @tkmskittles.

I've had a few teething troubles with the new EE kit - it feels in some ways like we are beta testing it.

The Alexa functionality is the critical service for me: using The EE integration with Alexa on the BT service meant that all of my home phones would ring if my mobile had an incoming call. I rely on that now because it means I don't have to keep my mobile with me around the house. 

I'll raise it with 150 today, and hope they can fix it quickly. The firmware in the Smart Hub Plus wasn't ready for release: this doesn't work, and neither does DDNS, which has now been removed. 

In the meantime, I'm wondering if I can make it work by setting up a second WiFi network, as a subnet of the Smart Hub Plus, using the BT Smart Hub 2 and pairing the phones with that rather than the main network...

[garywood84]

I phoned 150 about the Alexa issue this morning.

We worked through a troubleshooting workflow, but I'd already done all of the things it suggested (reboot the hub, de-register and re-register the phones). The conclusion of the workflow on EE's system was that I need to contact Amazon because the DV service is working OK.

The adviser agreed with me that this isn't satisfactory, because the phones were working find with the BT Smart Hub 2, and so the issue seems to be related to the EE Smart Hub Plus. The adviser was helpful and she's gone away to investigate further and is going to call me back tomorrow morning. 

(@tkmskittles - the adviser did say that escalation and visibility to senior staff, and ultimately the development team who can investigate any issue with the Smart Hub Plus firmware will depend on call volumes from customers reporting the issue. So, if you have time to call 150 and report it yourself, that may help us to get a resolution).

[AML4]

Exactly the same issue. Reported it. Have been told its a fault with my phone although the Alexa function worked perfectly with my BT hub. They are sending me a new phone. I just have the suspicion it will not resolve the issue. We shall see.

[garywood84]

EE Twitter support, and one of the EE team in this forum, has confirmed to me that the Smart Hub 3 is not compatible with the Alexa function in the Advanced Digital phones, and there are no plans to make it compatible. 

I'm going to see if it's possible to run the BT Smart Hub 2 within the Smart Hub Plus network, and use it to power the Advanced Digital Phones. Simultaneously, I'm finding out if BT Business Broadband, which has the Smart Hub 3, and so is WiFi 6, has the Alexa functionality and DDNS that are lacking on the EE hub. If so, I'll cool off on the EE contract and switch to BT Business. 

Really fed up about it though - EE should have been clearer up front where they had disabled features, and not promised that everything would be the same as with BT, save for the fact I'd have faster WiFi 6.

[garywood84]

I've tested running the BT Smart Hub 2 within the EE Smart Hub's network. This works to let me access the BT hub (i.e. I can log into it via it's IP address, and I can register the phones to it, but the BT Smart Hub reports not phone service, so it seems it can't connect to the BT server through the EE Smart Hub. Anyone from EE know of a way I can make this work? I wonder if it requires specific port forwarding?

[Storm500]

@garywood84  You need to have the BT Hub 1st connected to the master socket or the ONT for it to pickup Digital Voice. You then connect the LAN on BT Hub to WAN on EE Hub. Do a search on the BT community for using a third party router with digital voice for full setup.

[garywood84]

Thanks @Storm500. I feared this might be the case. The problem with having the BT Hub first is that it's not as fast as the EE Smart Hub Plus, and so creates a bottleneck in the network. Surely the only reason the BT Hub can't pick up digital voice if it's behind the EE router is because relevant ports need to be opened and forwarded in the EE Hub?

[Storm500]

@garywood84  No. It’s the way that Digital Voice is setup on the hub to receive/make the calls it has to be the first router.