Upggrade to fibre broadband has caused loss of my landline phones and Vodafone does nothing to help

[ojos]

I have had Vodafone broadband for several years. This included a contract for my landline phones which I have many around the house connected to phone sockets in different rooms. It was all working 100% fine until the fibre upgrade.

When I spoke to Vodafone support a few months ago about my interest in upgrading to fibre they said that, by default, landline phones would then needed to be connected directly to the router. I explained that my phone plugs around the house had been installed by BT and when I joined Vodafone broadband engineers it took them several days to check and re-cable my landline sockets to ensure they all continued to work. Vodafone said that yes, they were aware that some customers needed to continue to use all landline phone sockets. This could be solved by fitting an adaptor to the router. They said a note was made against my account to ensure this will happen upon my upgrade to fibre.

My broadband upgrade was booked for the end of May. A week before the upgrade I called Vodafone and reminded them of my need to continue use of my landline sockets. They did some checks and said, while by default, my home sockets would not continue to work, the engineers could install an upgrade with appropriate additional work and this would ensure the fix. They sent a note to Openreach to say that appropriate installation had to be done to ensure my landline sockets continued to work.

Upon arrival of Openreach on the upgrade day I spoke to the engineers who stated that the upgrade would be done to ensure my landline phones continued to work. When the engineers left, the fibre was not yet working although all my landline sockets continued to work satisfactorily. It took about 24 hours for the fibre broadband to start working, but conversely my landline then totally ceased to work. I contacted Vodafone who assured me it could take a further couple of days for my landline to be fully initialised. However, it's now been about a fortnight and I've lost my landline for which I am paying Vodafone. Vodafone has come up with all kinds of dubious excuses but the bottom line is "tough luck, to use your landline you have to plug a phone directly into the router". They've shown not the slightest interest in explaining why they promised the necessary work would be done for my phone sockets to continue working. I've raised formal complaints but Vodafone just continue to sit on their backsides and do nothing. I'm now stuck paying for a landline which has just a single phone plugged into it which is pretty much useless to me.

[Cynric]

@ojos I think that with fibre you plug the telephone into the back of the router. If you have extensions you may have to switch to DECT. There are discussions about this in the forum.

[ojos]

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@Cynric wrote:

@ojos I think that with fibre you plug the telephone into the back of the router. If you have extensions you may have to switch to DECT. There are discussions about this in the forum.

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That's the story Vodafone came up with but it is not true. Since creating my post about my wish to be able to continue to use my old landline phones into sockets installed by BT many years ago I have finally found an acceptable solution to the problem as follows:

Several months prior to my move to fibre I spoke to helpful Vodafone technical support. They told me that there is a device called an ATA which can be installed close to (and connected to) the router. This ATA which can then be attached to my in-house BT cabling which goes to every room in the house (and garage) and have standard landline phones plugged into it. They said that when I was subsequently switched over to fibre I could request this ATA be provided to me and it would enable me to continue to use all my existing plugged-in landline handsets. So, shortly before my move to fibre, I contacted Vodafone to remind them of this arrangement. They suggested this would be done.
However, it never happened. After switching to fibre, while my broadband itself was working perfectly, I could no longer use any of my plugged in landline phones. Vodafone then said that I had been given incorrect information by their technical team and no such ATA existed. They then left me with a landline catastrophe by being able to only plug a single phone into the router which was a total landline disaster to me.
In the following weeks I made an big effort to contact local BT phone experts and asked them as to whether they knew of a way to enable me to continue to use my plugged-in landline handsets around the house. Eventually I found a local man who had been a BT engineer and he confirmed that Vodafone's suggestion that traditional landline phones plugged in around the house could no longer be made to work was a lie. He then obtained for me the appropriate ATA, installed it exactly as the Vodafone technical team had told me months before and plugged it into my router. I am delighted to say that, despite so many people telling me traditional landline phones plugged in around the house can no longer be used with fibre, this is incorrect. Using the ATA all my old landline phones placed around the house now work perfectly, exactly as they did before fibre. Therefore I reject @Cynric's (and other people's) suggestion that it was mandatory for me switch to DECT.

[Cynric]

@ojos I don't believe that anyone said that using DECT was mandatory. Grandstream solutions may be suitable. There's plenty of talk about Grandstream elsewhere in this forum.

[ojos]

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@Cynric wrote:

@ojos I don't believe that anyone said that using DECT was mandatory. Grandstream solutions may be suitable. There's plenty of talk about Grandstream elsewhere in this forum.

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When you mentioned DECT I presume you refer to what everyone else normally calls cordless phones? I am familiar with (and have used) cordless phones for many years. However, since I have numerous standard old landline phones plugged in around the house which worked 100% fine using the old copper service, I wanted to use them rather than to go to the significant cost of purchasing additional cordless phones (and needlessly throwing away the old phones). Further, a couple of potential problems with cordless phones are:
1 that each and everyone of them has to be plugged into a mains socket, unlike the traditional landline phones. Some of my BT sockets are not near mains sockets so I don't wish to have to do mains rewiring.
2 My old landline phones can easily be hung up on a wall around the house unlike cordless phones which normally have to be placed on a shelf. So my landline phones were placed more conveniently around the house for me without my having to provide a shelf and a nearby mains power point.

I have never heard of Grandstream, so where can I quickly find out about it together with features. the cost and advantages without having to read numerous posts on this forum?

[Jayach]

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@ojos wrote:I have never heard of Grandstream, so where can I quickly find out about it together with features. the cost and advantages without having to read numerous posts on this forum?

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Grandstream are manufactures of VoIP phones and ATA's and other related networking devices.

Grandstream - Google Search

Nobody has yet got Vodafone's digital voice to work with anything other than Grandstream devices, which is why I don't believe you have an ATA.

Where on your Vodafone router has the engineer connected the cable to your phones? If it is the TEL socket(s) then it is using the ATA built into the Vodafone router.

[ojos]

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@Jayach wrote:

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@ojos wrote:I have never heard of Grandstream, so where can I quickly find out about it together with features. the cost and advantages without having to read numerous posts on this forum?

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Nobody has yet got Vodafone's digital voice to work with anything other than Grandstream devices, which is why I don't believe you have an ATA.

Where on your Vodafone router has the engineer connected the cable to your phones? If it is the TEL socket(s) then it is using the ATA built into the Vodafone router.

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As explained several times, my engineer told me I needed an ATA which he obtained and fitted for me on the wall near my router. He didn't mention the name of the manufacturer of the ATA, so maybe it was Grandstream? If, as you suggest, my router already has an ATA, why would  my engineer tell me he needed to fit an ATA which he did and thereby solved the problem?

[Jayach]

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@ojos wrote:
Eventually I found a local man who had been a BT engineer and he confirmed that Vodafone's suggestion that traditional landline phones plugged in around the house could no longer be made to work was a lie. He then obtained for me the appropriate ATA, installed it exactly as the Vodafone technical team had told me months before and plugged it into my router. I am delighted to say that, despite so many people telling me traditional landline phones plugged in around the house can no longer be used with fibre, this is incorrect. Using the ATA all my old landline phones placed around the house now work perfectly, exactly as they did before fibre. Therefore I reject @Cynric's (and other people's) suggestion that it was mandatory for me switch to DECT.

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I suspect what the ex-BT man has done is exactly what I suggested, voice re-injection.

It does not involve any form of ATA (Analogue telephone adapter), that is already built into the router.

What he has probably done is taken the LAN output of the Vodafone router to the extension wiring in the house.

As I (also) said, it's really simple, if you understand the concept of what you are trying to achieve.

For most people, it is definitely easier to simply go to DECT, the "no wires" connection is so much more convenient.

But I'm glad you have a solution that suits you in the end.

[Jayach]

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@Jayach wrote:

What he has probably done is taken the LAN output of the Vodafone router to the extension wiring in the house.

Oops, that should have said TEL output (obviously). Sorry it was a bit late when I wrote it.

[ojos]

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@Jayach wrote:

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@Jayach wrote:

What he has probably done is taken the LAN output of the Vodafone router to the extension wiring in the house.

Oops, that should have said TEL output (obviously). Sorry it was a bit late when I wrote it.

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As I stated, the connection is from the router into the ATA and the ATA does whatever is necessary to pass the landline phone signal to all the standard landline phones plugged into the individual BT sockets around the house. The Vodafone tech team who advised me prior to the fibre upgrade specifically stated that the landline sockets connection cannot be done without an appropriate ATA. After fibre upgrade the Vodafone complaints team specifically stated that it is not possible to connect landline phones plugged into original BT sockets and use them through fibre broadband. All the technical experts outside of Vodafone I have communicated with have clearly stated a device is necessary to connect between broadband router and all the BT sockets around the house. Please show me where your suggestion of connecting router TEL output directly to all original BT sockets is documented.