BT to EE and no Digital Home Phone

[WillKirk]

Been a BT customer for quite a number of years and had the pleasure of having a perfectly working Digital Voice service since switched.

A couple of days ago I phoned up and asked to change to the New EE as that’s the way things are going now and thought I would give it a go.

Have the new Smart Hub Plus and ever since I have had no phone service. The hub states Not Configured.

Swap back to the BT Smart Hub 2 and it appears immediately, shows phone number on hub, phones work when paired and dial tone.

Back to the Smart Hub Plus and stubbornly stays on Not Configured.

All I have talked to at EE over the phone are confused by this (once they get passed the: what does it do when you try to make a call? How many handsets do you have? Silly questions when they have already been told that the hub is showing no VoIP Service).

The case has now been ‘passed up’ to [some acronym] team but so far I have had no confirmation, proof or evidence really that this true and I’m not being left in the lurch because they don’t know what to do.

Seems to me that the Smart Hub Plus obviously has buggy software but, what do I do? Because no one seems to know what to do when the service is obviously being provided (as with other hub it activates) but nothing they do from within EE kicks it in on the equipment they have provided me…?

I haven’t paid my first bill yet and I’m thinking perhaps holding it to ransom will get me nowhere but I will be paying £12 a month for unlimited calls on a service that simply doesn’t exist (from the consumer standpoint).

Anyone know of anything similar and any solutions to this? A clever hit with a hammer in the right place, or twist of blue wire to red wire to Hotwire Digital Voice into life?

That aside I’m also disappointed with the lack of configuration backup and restore and the lackluster event log on this new Plus router… the font could do with changing too. So close to Comic Sans it hurts a little inside when I see the GUI 🙂

But back onto a serious note… I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do at this point as it’s not in my nature to lay down and be fobbed off but instead to ‘get it fixed’.

[WillKirk · Accepted solution]

The situation has now been resolved as of today (so in all took 15 days). The back office team (or offline team) did whatever they did and it registered then on the hub as configured with my phone number and everything came back as it should.

From discussions with certain people at EE/BT it seems that my original theory was correct, which is something worth watching out for.

If you were swapping from BT to 3rd Party Provider, and moved your Digital Voice, then the number would be ported, the service let go etc etc. If you then moved from 3rd Party Provider to EE, they would do the same again. However, as BT/EE for all intents and purposes are the same 'network' the service didn't actually 'move' anywhere. And as you can only have one phone number associated with one service, but there was no actual 'moving' of services, the Digital Voice was configured to connect to a BT Smart Hub 2 and knew no different. For all it knew (as far as systems can know anything), the BT Smart Hub 2 had simply been turned off and would be turned on again soon. The EE Smart Hub Plus obviously has a different identifier, but runs exactly the same otherwise. So sometimes, that identifier isn't changed from (for example, let's say:) BT to EE. This needs to be done by engineers that have access to those more technical systems — whether they do it all their end of if they have to SSH into the router itself, I have no idea. Once it is basically 'released' from the identifier hooking it to the expectation of the BT Smart Hub 2 it allows the possibility of another compatible device.

I suspect, with no evidence but only thought, that it really is something as simple as a reference code like: BT or EE and they change one little bit and hit restart and it all falls into place. A bug within the programming as not everyone has this issue when swapping between the two.

Hopefully it will be fixed in future iterations for their eventual migration of all BT Consumer/Residential customers to the EE company branding.

[Timo11]

Had the same issue when I received a new EE hub.

To connect your existing BT digital phones to your new EE hub, do the following on your phone

Press Menu, then settings, scroll down to register phone, press, then press WPS on hub for 2 seconds, phone will then sync. Job done.

[fennie561]

Sorry.. it really isn’t that simple.. you have to de-register your handset from the BT Hub (even if you’ve done factory reset).

it’s not documented anywhere..

[WillKirk]

Yeah…. No… funnily enough the handsets have nothing to do with it as they are DECT from the hub outward.

The issue was the Digital Voice Service from EE’s network ‘inward’ to the router. Handsets are irrelevant as they could be registered, not registered, off or on or thrown in next door’s bin, it makes no odds to the VoIP traffic coming down the line to the router.

Anyway, solution was as said and all other issues experienced with Digital Voice on Smart Hub Plus appear to be down to dodgy software - changed back to BT Smart Hub 2 and everything runs perfectly as it did before they sent me the oversized buggy Plus.

I also give an educated assumption that most people’s problems since moving to EE are likely caused by the buggy hub and a change back to a stable router such as the Smart Hub 2 would solve a lot for them too.

[JimM11]

@WillKirk From your analysis EE DV Service is working fine, the BT Smarthub2 connected proves that, the problem is the EE Smarthub+ Router only, if i am not mistaken...

[WillKirk]

Yup, that’s correct. So the issue, all issues I have been having with it, are down to the digital voice service between EE and the hub. That’s what I mean when I am referring to ‘that side’ rather than from the hub outwards to the handsets.

The service being provided by the EE is likely sound, but when it gets down the line to its endpoint, being the hub, it gets screwed. The output from there is then unreliable.

As the Smart Hub 2 works perfectly, the firmware is definitely the issue in the Plus model.

[gwe47]

I am having a similar issue.  Changed over to EE from BT coming up to 2 weeks ago.  The Smart Hub Plus I'm quite happy with otherwise, as its WiFi performance is very good.  However, I haven't had a voice phone since the switch.  Hub Manager simply says "not configured".  Initially the problem was the new contract did not include digital voice, but now that has been amended (which they insisted required that they drop the broadband speed from 900 to 300 "temporarily", which has happened), they still haven't been able to get it working.  After a couple of promised call backs not being made, and long waiting times to speak to anyone, I am getting rather annoyed at EE.

I haven't returned the BT Smart Hub 2 yet, so will give it a try to see if DV still works on that.

[fennie561]

Good that you’ve got the bt hub. If DV does work then you’ll need to de-register the handsets. This is critical as factory reset of the handset doesn’t de-register the handset. I know this repeats what’s I’ve said before but it’s a long thread. Good luck!

[gwe47]

OK thanks, sorry for the delay replying.  I reconnected the SH2 but it would not connect to the broadband, and shows digital voice as un-configured now.  I was able to use the handset menu to de-register the handsets, but it has not helped.  Handsets are now re-connected to the new EE router, but still show a message "no voice service on hub".  The problem seems to be that the EE Smart Hub + is not configured for digital voice.  Looks like another call to EE is in order 😭

[JimM11]

@gwe47 If you http://192.168.1.254 web manager to the EE router, you should be able to see the state of the DV system.