topic Re: Voice enabling my router in Broadband

Voice enabling my router

ken+pender — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 10:21:35 GMT

Hi,

I am 86 and suffer from problems with my balance, hence I have a personal alarm which I can activate if I have a fall. The alarm connects me to a support system via wifi but, for it to work, my router has to be voice-enabled. I have just installed the latest SKY router and, apparently it is not voice-enabled out of the box. Can anyone kindly advise me if there is a way of making it voice-activated.

Many thanks for any help,

Ken

Re: Voice enabling my router

TimmyBGood — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 10:27:56 GMT

@ken+pender wrote:

Can anyone kindly advise me if there is a way of making it voice-activated.

No Sky Hub model has such functionality: I'm not aware of any broadband router which does.

Re: Voice enabling my router

TimmyBGood — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 10:43:16 GMT

@ken+pender

I suspect you mean the router has to be capable of supporting voice calls, which is absolutely not the same thing as voice activation.

Voice calling requires the ISP to provision such a service on the circuit (which is now standard with new broadband service and upgrades) and the router to have a phone jack socket: the Sky Broadband Hub and Sky Max Hub models do so.

Re: Voice enabling my router

ken+pender — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 17:17:56 GMT

Hi Timmy,

Many thanks for your helpful replies. With my present setup, when I press my emergency button, a signal is sent to a base-station in the house via wifi and the base-station alerts a 24/7 call centre to let them know I have a problem. They can then alert emergency services.

At the moment, the link from my emergency button to the base station is not working . When I called Telecare 24, who provide the system, they told me "The router has to be voice enabled" which , as you point out, is not possible. I will follow up with Telecare to find the real cause of the problem.

Thanks again for your help,

Ken

Re: Voice enabling my router

TimmyBGood — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 17:30:27 GMT

@ken+pender

A Sky Broadband Hub or Max Hub can enabled for voice telephony, but only if Sky has provisioned that service on the line.

This is going to happen to every address over the next couple of years if it isn't in place already, but certainly isn't everywhere yet.