I recently had a frustrating and time-consuming experience setting up BT Advanced Digital Home Phones after switching from BT to EE. In EE’s simple setup guide, there was no mention of the potential issues or how to resolve them.
If you're making the same switch, I hope this post saves you time and frustration.
My Setup
I previously had BT Broadband with a BT Smart Hub 2 and four BT Advanced Digital Voice handsets connected wirelessly. I recently switched to EE and received their new EE Smart Hub Plus (which, by the way, is a big improvement over the BT one!).
What You Need to Know
Registering the phones: When you switch hubs, you must re-register each phone with the new one. In theory, it’s a simple process: press the WPS button on the hub and activate the Register function on the handset.
However, in my case, the phones seemed to retain some registration data from the BT hub, which blocked successful pairing with the EE hub.
Contacts are stored on the hub, not the handsets: You must export the contact list from the old BT hub before installing the EE one.
What Went Wrong in my case
After switching to the EE hub, some phones got stuck on the “Press OK to register the phone” screen and wouldn’t register via WPS. While stuck in this mode, I couldn’t access the handset settings.
Workarounds like holding down the Stop Call button… holding Stop Call and # buttons… prising off the back of the phone and removing the batteries… They all failed!
Yes, there is a factory reset option via Settings > Reset > Reset Handset, but if you can’t access the settings menu, that’s not helpful!
What Worked
I had to reconnect the old BT Hub and re-establish broadband connection. Luckily, the phones reconnected to the BT Hub so I could access the settings menu - I then manually de-registered each handset.
Whilst the Hub was up and running, I exported the contact list.
When the new EE Hub was reinstated, the phones registered onto the new Hub and the contacts list could be imported.
Tips for a Smoother Transition
BEFORE Disconnecting the BT Hub:
Export the contacts list by going to the Hub Admin page in a browser (https://192.168.1.254). Look for the Phone settings, and you should see a Contacts page where you can export the contact list – this is a vCard file (.vcf).
It may be a good idea to check the firmware on each phone via the settings menu - select Settings>Product info>Update software
And on each phone, go into their settings menu and select Settings>Registration>Deregister.
Alternatively, you could try performing a factory reset on each phone (Settings>Reset>Reset handset) but this will probably reset it to an older version of firmware.
AFTER Connecting the new EE Hub:
Re-registered each handset using the WPS button on the Hub.
Navigate to the Contacts page on the Hub settings (http://192.168.1.254/PhoneScreen/phone-contacts) and import the exported .vcf file to restore the phones’ contacts.
Feedback for EE
Please provide a migration guide for BT Digital Voice users or an obvious link to the information if it already exists. A simple alert about contact storage and registration quirks would prevent a lot of wasted time and troubleshooting.
