EE Smart Hub Plus working with FTTP (or not)

[Rochester]

I have been with EE since the Freeserve days and have just switched from a FTTC connection (solid connection) to FTTP with the Digital Home phone service. My network is not particularly complex, with an WiFi access point configured for part of the house, and a handful of Smart Home devices.

Initially everything appeared to be working well (after a day's delay following the Fibre and ONT installation) with the Smart Hub Plus and the phone adapter up and running, but it then quickly became apparent that Smart Hub Plus was intermittently losing connectivity with a frequency of anything from a few minutes to a couple of hours. It appeared to stay up longer if nothing was connected via WiFi (5GHz).

I tried all the usual steps to diagnose and fix the problem. The very limited Technical Log Entries merely showed the 2 Lan ports in use going down and DSL Connection Lost. After a couple of days getting nowhere, in desperation I unplugged the Smart Hub Plus and plugged in and configured my previous EE Smart Hub (not the Smart Hub 2, but the one with the parallel light slits above and below the EE logo) - Firmware version: v0.09.01.09281-EE Firmware updated: 14-Dec-2023. This appears to be working perfectly and has not (touch wood) disconnected in the several days since I configured it.

I would be content to stick with this solution apart from the fact that I need my home phone number to work. My main questions are, if I were to connect the Smart Hub Plus to the ONT, disable WiFi and DHCP, and then attach the Smart Hub to it, would that be likely to solve the connectivity issues? Plus, would I need to have the phone plugged into the Phone socket on the Smart Hub Plus, or should it also work via the adaptor even in this configuration?

I realise the obvious answer would be to try it and see, but I am reluctant to do that now that I have a solid connection without having a decent expectation that the Smart Hub Plus will work. Another benefit of my current set-up is that my network Access Control settings are intact. I understand that with the Smart Hub Plus they would need to be configured via the App; I took a quick look at this and it seems over-complicated. As far as the phone is concerned, I suppose I could cancel the Digital Home phone service and take out a VOIP plan with another provider, but I would need to be able to port my current number.

EE Customer Services said that they had heard that customers were reporting issues with the Smart Hub Plus that might be resolved by disabling 5GHz. They also said I would be notified if an update is made available to fix the issues.

[Rochester]

For some reason my last update was marked as Spam and removed, so here it is again:

CONCLUSION

I was mulling this over for a while and got to thinking along 2 lines - one that I should plug the SH+ back in, quickly set the home phone to divert to my mobile, and then go back to the SH2, and one that if my old Smart Hub was able to maintain a stable connection shouldn't I just consider getting one of the versions (EE or BT) that has a telephone socket built in and try this? And yes, I did check that there wasn't already one on the back of my SH cunningly hidden by a strip of black tape.

I was able to get hold of a BT Smart Hub 2 that fitted the bill, so to keep things simple I set this up to broadcast the same SSID and use the same password as my previous configuration (mainly to avoid faffing around trying to reconnect really old Amazon devices - which is a pain now that the web interface has been deprecated). I also toggled the Full-Fibre switch to enable LAN port 4 as WAN and connected it up to the ONT. The firmware was immediately auto-updated from v0.39.01.04077-BT to v0.42.00.10167-BT. Once it had rebooted, I paired it using WPS with the phone adapter that already had my DECT Base station plugged into it.

And ... so far the BT SH2 is maintaining a stable connection, and my phone line is finally working again. I was also at last able to retrieve some important voicemails that had been left by the local GP's practice. I still cannot benefit from absolutely every aspect of the digital voice service since I only have a set of old DECT phones so, for example, I am not able to set up a PIN code and get SMS notifications to my mobile when a message is left, nor access my voicemails remotely. I have got around this by setting the DECT base station to pick up on fewer rings than the digital voicemail setting so messages are recorded on the base station ansaphone - and that I can easily access from anywhere.

The SH2 seems just a little slower than the SH Plus on Wi-Fi 5 (though the upload speed is a bit faster), especially if I connect using the Archer AX10 Wi-Fi in access point mode . Oh, and I was also initially a bit disconcerted to see that the 'Hidden Network' that I saw with the SH Plus appears to be back with the BT SH2.

One other downside for me is that access controls are apparently not configurable without using the app (BT flavour, I presume), so at the moment a certain young man's Xbox is no longer set to be unavailable from 10.45 at night. It shouldn't matter, since I won't be bringing it to his attention (unless he happens to read this!).

So let's just see how it goes...I am surprised it has taken all this effort (and some financial outlay) just to get a decent working internet connection and phone line.  A big thank you to all commentators for your help.

[XRaySpeX]

No, it's not been removed. It's there as the Solution to this thread 4 mins before your last post.