Splitting phone from BT broadband and using 3rd party VOIP?

[ubersonic]

Hi all,

Kinda as the title says, I'm currently with BT on a VDSL 80Mbit but full fibre is now in the area and I want to get their 1600Mbit package (provided under the EE brand). The problem is moving to full fibre will mean losing my phone line, and BT/EE don't offer VOIP on any of their fast packages for some odd reason.

So what I'm looking to do, is find a VOIP supplier who can port over a number from BT, use them for some IP phones in my house. Then get BT to install full fibre on the 1600Mbit package, so I have high speed internet and I can still make/receive calls via the same phone number I've had since the 1980s.

Only problem is I have no idea what supplier to go with or even what to search to find them, has anyone here done anything similar?

Thank you.

 

[GregI]

The problem is that porting the number from BT will also cease your broadband and providers take this as you leaving (I know it's a bad system and this means early cancellation fees). Trust me I tried to communicate with BT that all I wanted to do was leave to port my number out and would resign up the day after i was done. They just straight up made up some excuse about how porting my landine to anything other than BT Digital Voice was impossible and that even if it was possible no other company could match their service... I mentioned Andrews & Arnold but they had no idea who that was and the ispreview.co.uk of them being a Top 10 provider meant nothing to them.

But yeah without a shadow of a doubt, Andrew and Arnold for the VoIP supplier: https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/

Ported over BT number in September with them. If you have any questions feel free to message me.

This was my way of doing it. I chose this way so that there was no risk of losing the number.

1: Only had 4 months left of the FTTC contract so decided that was fine to pay.
2: Signed up to Andrew and Arnold for VoIP via above link. Gave surname and BT account number in process.
3: Make sure to select the One Touch Switch (OTS) service on their page. BT got notified this was me leaving after a minute of signing up. Port took 4 working days iirc.
4: During this time I ordered a SIM router with an unlimited Lebara SIM card for £9.95 a month (1 month contract).
5: After landline was live on VoIP, set up the sim router and then ordered FTTP.
6. It was a long 3 weeks of SIM router broadband but it meant that there was no way to lose the number so each day I was happy.

What was hilairous is that BT retentions had phoned about 15 times after I had "left" them... if only they had listened. Now I have heard that if you do just order FTTP with no landline option the number goes into a sort of quarantine where nobody else can claim it for 30 days but again this left more questions than answers on if BT still had ownership so that A&A could take over. 3 weeks of semi bad internet seemed worth it to not lose a number the family has had since the 90s.

 

[Avalon]

I can’t speak for BT policy, but generally numbers were put back into the pool and not released for allocation for at least 90 days officially, and I believe that was a policy we had in common when I worked elsewhere - one of the guys I worked with was present in the process meeting decades ago where we sorted out ports/migrations/restorations. As to ‘ownership’ of the number, it always belongs to BT if it was an original BT number range - they still have it in the BT switch (exchange) to point it to the new provider and if it ever disconnects, then it goes back to BT. Historically if you moved home your current provider had to call the BT ports team to get a port reference number because your number was geographically locked to the original exchange coverage area, obviously VOIP has no such restriction.

 

[SpellowHouse]

What I did was talked to my ISP and allow the phone to continue for 1 month after the fibre installation, so that I had time to transfer the phone number. I used Sipgate but that was back in the day when accounts were free.
Some ISP's also provide a service of their own, but the BT VOIP system they use requires you to use the ISP provided VOIP unit, usually built in to the router they give you, so you are stuck with their router and their VOIP. You can always place an additional router after theirs, but that's a little silly.
I had old phones I wanted to work, so went with a Grandstream 801. Most VOIP services are familiar with that unit and will help you set it up.

 

[jpaul]

I had old phones I wanted to work, so went with a Grandstream 801.

you still use this to this day ? and have found quality acceptable with 3rd party voip, on those 'old' phones
my parents (hard of hearing) inadvertently accepted a BT fibre/digital voice install and I am concerned the quality they will get though BT's equivalent of 801 will be poor,
and, even if you can demand one of their digtal phones, it is not standard VOIP compatible
(think we may have had above discussion to this way back I subsequently took SKY fibre/digital voice where quality is fine, and have another voip line used on PC's and mobile)

 

[varkanoid]

Hi all,

Kinda as the title says, I'm currently with BT on a VDSL 80Mbit but full fibre is now in the area and I want to get their 1600Mbit package (provided under the EE brand). The problem is moving to full fibre will mean losing my phone line, and BT/EE don't offer VOIP on any of their fast packages for some odd reason.

So what I'm looking to do, is find a VOIP supplier who can port over a number from BT, use them for some IP phones in my house. Then get BT to install full fibre on the 1600Mbit package, so I have high speed internet and I can still make/receive calls via the same phone number I've had since the 1980s.

Only problem is I have no idea what supplier to go with or even what to search to find them, has anyone here done anything similar?

Thank you.

Hi,

moving to EE does not mean you lose your phone line well it does but thats not the actual issue. They switch you to digital voice. You can also have digital voice on BT. The problem is you lose your phone number when switching to EE. EE can not port over your phone number because there system is not compatible with BT's with regards to the phone. So you can have Digital Voice on BT, switch to Digital Voice on EE but you lose your phone number.

Other answer is you stick with BT and go Digital Voice on their 1600Mbit package.

The migration between BT > EE is an absolute mess I've spent since March this year trying to get full FTTP finally fitted today after many many many issues. I`m not the only one the BT Community Forum is littered with people having issues. At the moment best advice is dont go to EE. I was on Fibre with halo3 65mb and after a long story I got BT FTTP 900 installed today finally but I decided to get rid of Digital Voice (which had with Fibre 65mb) as we dont really use the phone.

I understand you were asking about VOIP not Digital Voice but just wanted to advise you about EE - you lose your phone number when migrating.

 

[Armageus]

Can you not just install Full Fibre as a second connection with BT?

Once up and running then you could port the number out from your VDSL

 

[#Chri5#]

Hi,

moving to EE does not mean you lose your phone line well it does but thats not the actual issue. They switch you to digital voice. You can also have digital voice on BT. The problem is you lose your phone number when switching to EE. EE can not port over your phone number because there system is not compatible with BT's with regards to the phone. So you can have Digital Voice on BT, switch to Digital Voice on EE but you lose your phone number.

Other answer is you stick with BT and go Digital Voice on their 1600Mbit package.

The migration between BT > EE is an absolute mess I've spent since March this year trying to get full FTTP finally fitted today after many many many issues. I`m not the only one the BT Community Forum is littered with people having issues. At the moment best advice is dont go to EE. I was on Fibre with halo3 65mb and after a long story I got BT FTTP 900 installed today finally but I decided to get rid of Digital Voice (which had with Fibre 65mb) as we dont really use the phone.

I understand you were asking about VOIP not Digital Voice but just wanted to advise you about EE - you lose your phone number when migrating.

I would need to check I've got all the detail right, but Mrs Chris's parents moved from BT FTTC to EE FTTP and have managed to get their old PSTN number on the EE Digital Voice. They had a problem during the migration where if you were already on FTTP you could ring their old PSTN number and it would ring on the DECT phone (which was plugged into the new EE router) but us calling from a PSTN line didn't ring at their end.

I will double check that there's not a fudge somewhere to make their old PSTN number work still.

 

[varkanoid]

I would need to check I've got all the detail right, but Mrs Chris's parents moved from BT FTTC to EE FTTP and have managed to get their old PSTN number on the EE Digital Voice. They had a problem during the migration where if you were already on FTTP you could ring their old PSTN number and it would ring on the DECT phone (which was plugged into the new EE router) but us calling from a PSTN line didn't ring at their end.

I will double check that there's not a fudge somewhere to make their old PSTN number still.

Both BT and EE said you would lose your number and I've read posts from others who have lost it. Problem is there is so much misinformation if you get get through to BT Doncaster Call Centre they know different stuff to the BT Call Centre in Scotland.

 

[SpellowHouse]

you still use this to this day ? and have found quality acceptable with 3rd party voip, on those 'old' phones
my parents (hard of hearing) inadvertently accepted a BT fibre/digital voice install and I am concerned the quality they will get though BT's equivalent of 801 will be poor,
and, even if you can demand one of their digtal phones, it is not standard VOIP compatible
(think we may have had above discussion to this way back I subsequently took SKY fibre/digital voice where quality is fine, and have another voip line used on PC's and mobile)

Oh, these are 1940's phones. I bought a pulse to tone converter, so I can dial out with them, plugged them in to the 801, and spent ages replicating the BT ring, just so they ring like they used to!

I do have dect phones for everyday calls where I might need extra functions. I didn't replace the old dect, well, because why?

Yep, BT's VOIP is not compatible with normal VOIP. It probably works with the BT system, though, which the 801 does not. I mean the 801 is intended for America, and of course BT went their own way. A little configuration and the 801 99.9% replicates the BT system in the UK, but I still have some trouble with it. Mainly, for some reason, it can completely fail in menu systems for banks and so on. I did actually manage to cause a security alert on my account at one point, thanks to it doing something that caused alarm at the service centre.

I have to say it was a lot of messing around and it has never been 100%. I would always recommend going with the system your ISP provides, becuase then you can blame them.