BT (EE) landline and new hub

Krakkkers

My mum got a new landline contract recently with BT, now EE and they sent her a new hub and we sent the old one back.
The landline phone is connected to the hub and the hub to the wall socket via a filter.
Every couple of weeks the hub drops its connection and the phone stops working and this is freaking her out ( she is 92 and recently widowed) she has massive panic attacks when this happens and phones me via the mobile i bought her (she gets a neighbour to make the call as she does not know how to use the mobile in spite of being instructed many times)
She has internet so my brother can work from her home a couple of times a week and look after her and she uses an Alexa.
Does anyone with experience of these new EE hubs know if you can bypass the hub and plug the phone into the wall directly? Its an ADSL area. This has become an obsession with her now.

mebu60

If it is VOIP (which is very likely with a new contract) then the phone has to be connected to the hub.

Have you tried plugging it into the wall socket telephone port to see if it still works?  

Ayr_Rage

If the phone handset is connected to the router the voice service has been migrated to VoIP (over the internet) and the old copper service will have been disconnected so there is nowhere else you can connect the handset.

The fallback when the internet connection drops is the mobile, there is no other option.

iniltous

IP telephony is now the default way to provide landline type phone services, so unfortunately if the broadband drops the phone wont work until the broadband service is restored… for most this is a worry about power cuts so the lack of power stops broadband working and that issue can be fixed with a BBU/UPS ( battery back up , uninterruptible power supply  ) but your issue doesn’t sound power related so that won’t help , broadband shouldn’t drop out regularly, so report it faulty , but you cannot go back to plugging the phone into the wall socket …that’s no longer possible.

ScratchyCat

This is my worry. Im with EE and out of contract so need to renegotiate a better deal. Paying £46 a month for a very poor connection but at least we have good phone. We have a broadband and landline package. My mum is elderly and cannot manage a mobile inspite trying. We have a very old router. Internet connection drops out quite a bit lately, but mainly just very slow and has been for years. We are rural and nearly a mile from the cabinet. We are on overhead cables so fibre is not an option. I believe they may have fibre to the cabinet now. But an engineer said it wont make much difference bevause of the distance from the cabinet and overheads cables. My download speed on my phone is 2.45 mbps on wifi. Not much better with computer plugged in directly to router either. Im told the technology in new routers is much better so i should see if EE can provide a more modern one but im worried that getting a new router and having to plug the phone in to the back now could render mum without a landline if its the line and distance thats the issue. 
When we were left without internet last year, ee sent an engineer out. Before they came out ee reset the line at there end (forget now what the term is they used, but they done it a couple of times,) so there was nothing to be fixed. The engineer told use that the most we could get was 5mbps because of the overhead. I really dont know what to do. It seems like a lot of money for a very poor service. We dont want to be with a phone. 

Timalay

Can she not get some form of fibre broadband with EE?  BT is phasing out all copper lines.  EE does offer a hybrid phone that allows her to keep making calls via the EE cellar network when the broadband goes down.  Here.

iniltous

IP telephony is not less reliable than PSTN , quite the opposite really , the PSTN equipment in the exchange is around 40 years old and hasn’t been manufactured for decades , basically it’s unreliable , has there is no consistent way of replacing faulty equipment , given there are no spares being made , to fix problems , old equipment is moved around , it’s not ideal, imagine using a 40 year old PC or mobile phone , distance is no real barrier to IP telephony, the bandwidth requirements are tiny , so even 2 or 3 Mb broadband is 20 or 30 times more bandwidth than IP telephony needs , the only real argument against it is if the household power fails then the router will have no power and therefore no broadband or telephony, but ultimately that’s a power  company issue ( if someone has unreliable mains power ) and can be mitigated with a BBU anyway .

If you are on ADSL , and not on FTTC , you are not likely to be moved to IP telephony in the short term , but there is a product that can deliver this called  SOTAP , so if you recontract or change provider even if you stay on ADSL , you will probably put you onto IP telephony, the short term solution is don’t renew or change provider, but obviously that will undoubtedly be more expensive than renewing or changing provider that’s your choice,  but you can’t expect the best deals and the option to remain as you are ….wether you like it or not telephony is changing, PSTN is on the road  to total retirement and IP telephony ( BT call theirs Digital Voice ) is its replacement , and by Jan 2027 PSTN will be switch off , that’s just the way it is .

iniltous

IP telephony is not less reliable than PSTN , quite the opposite really , the PSTN equipment in the exchange is around 40 years old and hasn’t been manufactured for decades m do basically it’s unreliable , has no consistent way of replacing faulty equipment , imagine using a40 user old PC or mobile phone , distance is no real barrier to IP telephony, the bandwidth requirements are tiny , so even 2 or 3 Mb broadband is 20 0r 30 times more bandwidth than IP telephony needs , the only real argument against it us if power fails then the router will have no power and therefore no broadband or telephony, but ultimately that’s a Power company issue ( if someone has unreliable mains power ) and can be mitigated with a BBU anyway .

If you re on ADSL , you are not likely to be moved to IP telephony in the short term , but there us a product that can deliver this SOTAP , so recontract or change provider will probably put you onto IP telephony, the short term solution is don’t renew or change provider, but obviously that will undoubtedly be more expensive than renewing or changing provider …..it’s your choice but you can’t expect the best deals and the option to remain as you are ….wether you like it or not telephony us changing, PSTN is on the road  to total retirement and IP telephony ( BT call theirs Digital Voice ) is its replacement 

ScratchyCat

How can one find out about SOTAP service and costs. I havent heard of it. I just read you dont need to have broadband with this  The reason i ask is because of location it is possible that a 5G router with sim card could work in my rural area,  so all i would need is a landline services. Ive looked at reconnecting to BT  who are the only provider just doing landline only service. Its £70 reconnection and £36 a month. Paying for a 5G router on top means id pay nearly double the £46 poor services i get now. So i might as well stick with what i have and just see if i can negotiate a new contract price for now.

iniltous

You seem to have completely misunderstood what you have read , SoTap is the ADSL version of SoGEA , basically it’s either ADSL or VDSL (FTTC) broadband without any legacy PSTN telephone service attached to it  .

You call an  ISP who these days has to sell you sell SoTap or SoGEA , because the historical products are now removed from sale and have been for a while , the ISP won’t call it SoTap or SoGEA to you because it’s not relevant what the product they buy from Openreach is called , but they may offer IP telephony as an additional service, as stated BT/EE call theirs Digital Voice , Sky call theirs something like ‘Internet Calling’  , Talk Talk have their own version confusingly called Digital Voice but has nothing to do with BT/EE , but it’s all similar in that to access the telephone service your phone instrument plugs into the broadband router , and the ‘Internet’ is used to connect your calls , not the exchange equipment that’s in your local exchange , that’s why your phone socket on the wall is no longer  used by your phone,  but the broadband router is still connected to the wall socket .

FYI , apart  from connecting to the router it’s the same , you use your existing phone , you get dialtone when you lift the receiver, you dial as you do now , so that shouldn’t upset the elderly or those resistant to change , as stated it’s only someone who has frequent power outages that has any reason to feel disadvantaged and that’s got a solution anyway .

4G/5G mobile telephony is unrelated, if you are considering it as a replacement for your broadband but keep a landline just for telephony, that’s expensive, no real difference in price you would pay for telephony on its own compared to telephony and broadband over the landline , and then the 4g/5g costs on top , plus , even standalone landline telephone will eventually be IP , although these customers will be the last to move from PSTN , so January 2027 , plus as there are no companies apart from BT required to offer a standalone phone service , you won’t find anyone apart from them that will supply just a phone service , everyone else will require you to take broadband to get telephony