Changing providers with Digital Voice

btdigitalvoicescam

My contract with BT for telephone and broadband is coming to its end. Renewal at £50pm looks too expensive so I am looking to change.

Last year BT switched me to Digital Voice and other broadband suppliers don't seem to know how to deal with it.

Is it possible to change providers and ideally keep my number? Has anyone else gone through this?.

iniltous

Digital Voice (DV) is BT’s proprietary telephony offer , other ISP may offer telephony that requires the customer to plug into their broadband router in the same way , but it’s not ‘DV’ ,if  they offer something similar  it’s likely to have its own ‘name’ , AFAIK, Sky call their service something like ‘internet calls’ ,
if you want to take your phone number to a different provider, then it’s the new provider needs to arrange the number to be ported to themselves, ( the same as before ) and given that many messed up with number ports on the plain old telephony system ( POTS ) , then the added complexity of DV may cause even more screw ups , but ultimately its the new provider you advise that you want to keep your number , then they either say ‘yes’ and succeed, say ‘yes’ and fail , or say ‘no’ at the outset , if they say yes and it fails and the new provider says it’s BT fault , the fact is you never instructed BT at all , the new company did, and you would only have the new company’s ‘word’ that they correctly applied for the number to be ported.
As the company you chose to provide your service is the only company you deal with, basically it’s them that would be responsible for the failure of any number port , but technically and procedurally numbers can be ported even if they are currently delivered by DV.

matelodave

I had BT with digital voice until January this year when they wanted the best part of £60 to renew. I therefore swapped to Vodafone who provided both broadband and phone using the internet for just over £30.

We've still got our old phone number, the phone plugs straight into the router, we also get faster speeds and unlimited calls compared with BT's offer of 700minutes.

On the day of changeover (which we chose) we just unplugged all the cables from the BT router and replaced them into the VF router and it all worked, both BB and phone.

brewerdave

Some ISPs don't appear to be interested in offering a phone service with "full fibre" - Plusnet won't even let existing customers carry over phone number/service from FTTC to FTTP

btdigitalvoicescam

What a performance!  BT would only offer to lower the price to £39.99.  Vodafone said a straight no (don't know why).  Plusnet tod us that they didn't do internet calls.  Shell wouldn't let us keep the same telephone number. We've finally managed to switch to Sky.

Why does every phone line always experience "an unusual high volume of calls"?

HonestJohn

btdigitalvoicescam said:

What a performance!  BT would only offer to lower the price to £39.99.  Vodafone said a straight no (don't know why).  Plusnet tod us that they didn't do internet calls.  Shell wouldn't let us keep the same telephone number. We've finally managed to switch to Sky.

Why does every phone line always experience "an unusual high volume of calls"?

More like an unusually low number of staff to answer them.
Surely Ofcom must rule on ISPs offering digital calls when the copper is removed.

brewerdave

HonestJohn said:

btdigitalvoicescam said:

What a performance!  BT would only offer to lower the price to £39.99.  Vodafone said a straight no (don't know why).  Plusnet tod us that they didn't do internet calls.  Shell wouldn't let us keep the same telephone number. We've finally managed to switch to Sky.

Why does every phone line always experience "an unusual high volume of calls"?

More like an unusually low number of staff to answer them.
Surely Ofcom must rule on ISPs offering digital calls when the copper is removed.

So far , no sign. Presumably they are making the assumption (wrongly) that everyone can use a mobile for calls - my ISP ,Plusnet, are not offering a phone service at all when moving to FTTP. 

johnbhoy70

My BT Fibre and Digital Voice is ending end of November. Stayed (and moaned about them) for years and  i've had quite a few quid back over that period. A good few hundred compo. They always offered decent discounts on renewal and i was aware that my issues would be the same regardless of who i chose.

Now they've laid FTTP cable it's a diferent ball game now i feel. Due to the new cable i asked this very question regarding changing with digital voice and BT customer services told me nothing has changed??

I'd like to keep my old BT number and landline but if there's any cost i think i'll just give it up. I have free weekend calls at the moment and if they want to start charging for that they can keep it. That also goes for any possible future provider that wants to do the same.

I forgot to add that obviously BT didn't charge for Digital Voice when they moved me onto it a few months ago. I'm guessing it was because i had no choice

iniltous

BT DV and BT PSTN have the same call packages and tariffs , so moving onto DV doesn’t cost the consumer anything more ( or less ) , if BT instigated the change , no change to minimum term dates etc., there isn’t any money to be made in ‘calls’ , so it’s possible that some ISP that currently offer telephony with broadband ( a legacy of when a telephone service was required before broadband could be added ) will simply not offer telephony when their customers are on FTTP , and if their customers want it , advise them to sign up with a third party VoIP provider , TT ( initially at least ) were not offering telephony with their Openreach FTTP , that may be changing .
Obviously, some may think it’s not competitive if those who want to keep a phone service when they are on FTTP have less providers to chose from than those that only want broadband from FTTP , but apart from BT , no one else is mandated to provide telephony , with the possible exception of the USO provider in Hull, if these other ISP’s see ‘calls’ as a loss making business, they won’t offer it and can’t be made to.

btdigitalvoicescam

Update.  Successfully moved to Sky.  Many, many years ago we paid for a better router as the one provided gave very poor coverage.  BT are now demanding that we sent it back to them or they'll charge us £50.  Pure extortion.  Looking at Trustpilot,  87% give 1* to BT.  Hardly surprising!

matelodave

It's not extortion, it's what you agreed to when you took out the contract

It was a condition of your deal with BT that you send the router back or you'll get charged. Perhaps you should read the T&C's,