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.

[ojos]

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@Jayach wrote:

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

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When you say DECT, are you referring to what most people (including myself) refer to as a cordless phone? If so, as I mentioned elsewhere, I have used cordless phones for years. However as I said:
1 I didn't want to spend a large amount of money purchasing additional cordless phones and throw away all the old landline phones plugged into my home which had been working perfectly.
2 Cordless phones normally need a shelf for them to stand on and a nearby mains power point. However my landline phones are generally hung on the wall (needing no shelf) and do not have a power point nearby.

For those reasons I preferred to keep my old landline phones and have the ATA fitted by the engineer.

[Jayach]

The service you required from Openreach is known as Voice Re-Injection (VRI) and if Openreach had been tasked with providing it it would have been chargeable. 

Try a a google search to find out more about it, but it is pretty basic and you could do it yourself, or get a local technician to do it.

voice re-injection installation - Google Search

[Cynric]

@Jayach That's interesting, thanks. I may need that in the future.

[Jayach]

@Cynric 

It's really easy to achieve if you move to Full Fibre, as the internal wiring is completely redundant.

Moving to digital Voice on FTTC is a bit more complicated as the master socket needs to stay connected to the incoming line, however there is a replacement faceplate that makes it easier.

[Jayach]

Would have added this to the previous comment, if only there was more time to edit the post.

vri nte5c "sogea faceplate" - Google Search

[Ripshod]

Just a thought. An ex BT engineer? Really? So not exactly up to date with the current systems? 

[Jayach]

@ojos 

Thanks for letting us know your experience, but the information you say you have been given by the various Vodafone tech agents is wrong. That is not unusual at all.

There are some very technical posters on here, and what you are telling us doesn't ring true, and we would like to understand better just how the ex-BT man has achived the fix for you.

But I understand you can only tell us what you have been told, and if it's not possible to supply some pictures then we will just have to be left confused.😕

Have a good day.

[ojos]

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@Jayach wrote:

@ojos 

There are some very technical posters on here, and what you are telling us doesn't ring true, and we would like to understand better just how the ex-BT man has achived the fix for you.

But I understand you can only tell us what you have been told, and if it's not possible to supply some pictures then we will just have to be left confused.😕

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As I explained earlier, when my engineer turned up with the new ATA, he showed it to me. It was a white box about the size of a 13 amp mains power socket to be mounted on a wall, but about half the thickness. It had no identification details written on the outside at all that I could see. As I have mentioned earlier today, the ATA had to be located on a wall at the bottom of my indoor stairs where BT and Vodafone/Openreach had installed my incoming Master Socket and related wiring. The engineer spent a long time fitting the ATA. Being located in a very narrow space on a wall under the stairs makes it quite difficult to reach and there was certainly no suitable space available for me to watch him closely. I have just crawled under there into that difficult to reach space.  As far as I can see the ATA is attached directly to the wall where the old BT Master Socket was. On top of that is fixed a second device which is a larger white box which is marked on the top with the words:
Openreach Master Socket 5C
and at the side saying:
Openreach MK4
I don't recall this large Master Socket being there prior to the engineer arriving on the day to fix my landline connection problems, so maybe he installed that as well? As this Master Socket appears to be attached directly on top of the ATA I have no way of photographing the ATA without removing the Master Socket box. I am unwilling to do that as it may well totally wreck my ability to use my household landline phones again. All I can say is that prior to the day of this this ATA upgrade, the old BT Master Socket was much smaller and apparently has been removed.
The bottom line is that this engineer totally solved my landline problem by attaching new boxes (including ATA) in place of the old BT Master Socket. Due to the risk of seriously and permanently damaging my landline phone system I regret being unable to take a photograph of the ATA as I would need to disconnect and remove the Openreach Master Socket 5C sitting on top.

[Ripshod]

That's not an ATA. The only thing that can go behind an NTE5C is a pattress box, to allow space for the cables. Incoming line terminates to the back of the NTE5C. The Openreach mk4 faceplate contains just a filter for DSL and provides seperate modem and telephone socket, with internal terminals for extension sockets. That's all it is.

This "ex BT Engineer" friend of yours has sold you a lie. I say one more time - there's no ATA. An ATA would connect to the router's LAN. 

[Jayach]

I was about to say the same as @Ripshod, that's not an ATA, all the engineer has done is a voice re-injection, as I suggested at the start.

What will prove it absolutely is what port is it connected to on the Vodafone router.

If it is in the one of the TEL sockets, it's VRI, if it's in a LAN socket it's using an ATA.