BT home hub / 05603 number confusion

emski1234

Please could someone who has all their services with BT (phone, broadband and BT Vision) give me some advice please? Why do they give you two telephone numbers? One is an 05603 number, the other is a number beginning with our local area code. I am guessing the 05603 number is to do with the broadband? If you have the same scenario, which number do you give out to people to contact you on? When people phone our local landline number, it doesn't show who's calling, but when someone phones our 05603 number, it does, so I've always given out the 05603 number. I've never been happy with that, as I'd rather simply have one phone number that begins with our local area code. Now the 05603 number isn't receiving calls, so I've been on the phone to BT this afternoon to sort it out. They were quite unhelpful and didn't understand why I had two numbers?? I don't want two numbers, I only want my local number! When I dial out from my home phone, it shows up the 05603 number, so people are going to want that one stored so they know its me surely?
I'm quite confused, would rather just have my local number, not an 05603 number, and I don't know what to do. The BT lady is phoning me back monday about the fault and I will discuss further with her then. But she just didn't know why I had two numbers. She was asking if I'd asked for two seperate lines, which I never have. But I told her I have broadband, telephone, and bt vision. She really didn't seem to understand.
Sorry for the ramble, but I just wondered what other people did who have the BT homehub and have an 05603 number as well as their local one?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help. BT have me properly confused.

iniltous

With BT broadband you can have ( if you want one ) another number (its an IP phone number and works over the internet) this can be a 0560 number or the same STD code as your landline number...it can be useful if you want to make a call when the landline is already on a call, or give the number to your kids to give to their mates then if the broadband line rings you know its not for you, but if you dont want it call BT Broadband ( not the BT landline people) tell them to remove it.
If you are using a hub phone or a phone plugged into the hub then it sounds like you are selecting the broadband line not your landline when you make outgoing calls...did you get caller display activated on your landline because if you dont have it then calls to your landline number wont display who is calling..
You can 'toggle' between selecting the broadband line and the landline by pressing a number on the handset (see your manual) the dailtone has a different 'pitch' for the broadband line..or plug a phone direct into the telephone socket (not the hub socket)

Heinz

iniltous gives a good summary but I find it most worrying that the BT person you spoke to clearly did not know such basic details.

Another one in need of some more training?

emski1234

Thank you both for your replies. My OH has now been on the phone to them all afternoon. They keep putting him through to different teams. Long story short, they say they can't remove the 05603 number. We've told them we only want the local landline, do not want to use the 05603 number and they said this isn't possible. It's getting infuriating. The only thing they could suggest is to take out the phone, leave it dormant for 6 weeks and it will become disconnected. In the mean time I can purchase a different phone and plug it into a different phone socket in my house and then it wil be on our landline. This just seems a ludicrous situation that doesn't need to be complicated!! :mad: I just want to dial out and receive phonecalls with my local landline number, on my bt homehub phone. They keep saying the hub phone is purely for the internet/talk line and can only use 05603 number. I can press 5 before each call to dial out on my local number. But I still can't get called ID on the local number due to the homehub only being for the internet phone line!
Does anyone else have a homehub please and uses the phone like a normal phone without an 05603 number? Any more help would be massively appreciated.

iniltous

You may need to change some settings on your hub, you can log onto your hub from your browser http://bthomehub.home/. click on the telephones tab, it may ask for a password (try 'admin')
Is the hub phone the only phone you have ?, when I get an incoming call the hub phone doesnt display a number or ring ( the ringing because of my hub settings) but my ordinary 'dect' cordless phones do...it may not be possible for the hub phone to display CLI info from the landline number,
To check you have caller display at all you probably need to (if you havent already) plug an ordinary phone with a display (not the hub phone) into your phone socket, make a call to your landline number and see if it displays the number from the person making the call (try calling it from a mobile)...if you get no display its possible you dont have Caller Display on your landline and will need to call BT to get it enabled, if it does then you will need to plug in an ordinary phone as well as the hub phone to 'see' who is calling before you answer on incoming calls to your landline number,
If you plug an ordinary phone with a display into the main telephone socket as well as the hub (using a adsl filter).. the ordinary phone will always select the 'landline' not the broadband line, if you only want to use the hub phone you probably will have to 'toggle' from broadband dialtone to ordinary dialtone everytime you want to make a call using your landline number

BT_company_representative

Hi Emski1234

I would echo the advice of iniltous, you can access the hub manager as he has advised and change the setting so the number you dial out from is your land line number.

Hope you were able to get this set up.

Cheers

Stuart

WallyBird

Hi, we have just got a BT service (after many years with Virgin in its previous incarnations) and we have the same kind of problem, except that we have two local area code numbers. One is our "phone number" and the other is our "Broadband talk" number. When I phoned my sister, I asked her to do a 1471 to see which number had called, and it was the BB talk one. I haven't even managed to get past BT's automated service to talk to anyone yet, so am really confused. Our calling plan is Unlimited Anytime, and BT total Broadband Option 3, and BB talk Evenings and Weekends. We have two phones, a hub phone and an old fashioned phone with a cable, plugged in with a wire (I don't trust wireless phones on health grounds, so don't like using the hubphone unless I can't get to the other one).

What I am worried about is that I may be accidentally using a phone/hubphone/number that costs money, when we are paying for the unlimited service. The whole thing is already a lot more expensive than our old Virgin service (but that is not available in our new house area) so I don't want to make it any worse for the 18 months we are tied in. We chose BT because we wanted a high speed broadband and that was the highest for now.

Emski1234 do you understand this yet? Is my problem exactly the same (I don't have an 05... number)? Please can anyone throw any light on this? Is there any advantage to having this extra number (I don't have children to block up the phone line)? Is it the same as skype (which I know little about and have never used)? Can it be used for cheap overseas calls or anything like that?

On a slightly different topic, I would also appreciate links on how to save money once committed to BT.

Many thanks.
Wallybird.