topic Re: Moving from BT to EE with Advanced Digital Home Phone with Alexa in Broadband & Landline

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

garywood84 — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 21:30:27 GMT

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?

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

tkmskittles — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 03:04:30 GMT

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

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

garywood84 — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 07:16:09 GMT

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...

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

garywood84 — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 09:51:15 GMT

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).

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

AML4 — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 20:13:11 GMT

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.

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

garywood84 — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 22:16:03 GMT

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.

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

garywood84 — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 22:55:42 GMT

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?

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

Storm500 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 09:28:11 GMT

@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.

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

garywood84 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 12:24:18 GMT

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?

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

Storm500 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 17:13:12 GMT

@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.

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

garywood84 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 18:06:58 GMT

@Storm500 But why would that be the case? There must be something about the EE router that "gets in the way". What can that be, if not closed ports?

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

Storm500 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 18:53:59 GMT

There’s a lot of posts on the BT community about using and setting up third party routers with digital voice and the BT Hub has to be first to pick up digital voice as the third party router won’t pass digital voice through. They also give information on how to setup the BT first with the third party router second.

Your case is different as you have effectively 2 BT routers so which ever one you have first takes digital voice and won’t pass it through to the second. Digital voice is BT’s proprietary version of VOIP and for security the BT/EE routers don’t allow digital voice to pass through. So you will have to choose which router to use.

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

garywood84 — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 01:01:39 GMT

The plot thickens. My complaint handler at BT/EE escalated the Alexa issue and has heard back from senior managers who (a) didn't know or expect the Smart Hub Plus to be incompatible with Alexa on the phones; and (b) are not aware of any issues arising with this service.

The complaint handler is investigating further and will contact me again on Wednesday, but it's interesting to have this feedback along with that of EE on Twitter, which claims the Smart Hub Plus is incompatible with the phones' Alexa functionality, and the 150 support agents who claim that it should be working, and advise me to phone Amazon!

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

AML4 — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 07:27:50 GMT

I have had problems with my digital phones since switching to the smart hub plus. These seem to have been resolved except no Alexa. I have multiple Alexa devices in my home which are all up and running but as said earlier no Alexa on my phone. I therefore presume i have no problems with Amazon and my smart hub plus or my broadband. The tech team who have been sorting out the issues on my phones said it was a line problem which they needed to fix externally. This they seem to have done except for the non Alexa. They are going to contact me on Thursday re the digital phone issues. I will report back what they have to say about the non functioning Alexa. I am not very good technically and am very much regretting switching from bt to ee as I have had no problems with my smart hub 2 and my digital phones previously. They have functioned very well for over 2years with no problems. Sent from my Galaxy

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

garywood84 — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 07:34:17 GMT

@AML4 Thanks for the update mate.

I'm in the same position with Alexa, and am getting mixed messages from EE. Some of the team there say they are getting a lot of calls about this but their "workflows" don't include a solution, and I should contact Amazon; others, including the EE staff in this forum and on Twitter, say the handsets are not compatible with the Hub, Alexa won't work, and there are no plans to make it work; and the Executive Complaints team says that senior managers are unaware of a problem and believe it should work!

In due a call from Executive Complaints again on Wednesday with a further update...

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

redjasper30 — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 10:59:29 GMT

I have the same problem as the one you've described above, my BT dect handsets no longer work for voice with my new EE hub.

I can see that the fix is to use your BT Hub as well, but I've sent that back to BT at their request.

Any idea if there is there anything else I can do to fix the situation?

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

mountain-goat — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 23:12:04 GMT

I have spoken to BT support re Alexa not working with the EE Smart Hub Plus towards the end of last year having had weeks where the BT handset just didn't work, (it does say on the box that the phone only works with BT Hub2 but with the new relationship BT/EE you could expect compatibility with the EE hub), and there was an EE 'relationship' engineer in their office at the time and they said Alexa was planned to be working with the EE hub sometime in February 2024. It took quite a few weeks before EE got the BT phones working properly.

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

AML4 — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 09:54:05 GMT

Similar tale. My digital phones now work but one of their people told me there are no immediate plans re AlexaSent from my Galaxy

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

Graham-SB — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 14:51:09 GMT

I have the same situation, apparently EE do not have a licence for Alexa, even though they are now part of BT, you would think that BT would have included this in the cooperation and ensured the Digital Voice Service was maintained for the benefit of those using it.

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

XRaySpeX — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 22:23:00 GMT

@garywood84 : Are you plugging your BT Advanced Digital Home Phones with Alexa base station into the phone socket on the router or the adapter, or are you using it over DECT to connect with the router's inbuilt DECT base station?