Adapter to connect landline to hub remotely..?

[NicholasG]

Hello All,

Just had my new set up done, but because of the way cabling is set up around the building, Openreach had to drill in the back, and thus I was forced to have my hub to the other side of the house, far from my study/

Setting aside that I now need a booster (and reviews of these are not great), my new package requires me to connect my landline directly to the hub. However, it is very inconvenient to have the phone set in the room the hub is now in.

I was told there is an adapter (which works like an antenna?), which plugs wherever I want my phone to be, and then I connect my phone base to it. What is this adapter called? Sky Tech Support was unable to give me anything beyond 'adapter'. When googling 'adapter to connect landline to sky hub from another room', I get bombarded with all kinds of irrelevant things, from SkyTV connectors (I don't own a TV), to splitters, to BT equipment.

Please help. What is it I should be looking for? Can anyone suggest an adapter?

[Mark39]

I'm not aware of any such adaptor. The best solution is probably to invest in a cordless DECT phone, where a base station plugs into the Hub and you can place the handset where you want it or carry it with you.

[NicholasG]

It is cordless. But the room the hub is now in does not have a good place to put even the base, due to a variety of issues, not the least of which is that location of the plugs is very awkward, and such that does not easily resolve with extension cords. (Plus, would you like to run 20m extension cords all around your living room, and trip over them?) There are other issues as well, so my question stands.

Algain, to reiterate. Sky Tech Support and the Openreach guy both mentioned such an adapter. So, anyone?

[TimmyBGood]

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@NicholasG wrote:

Algain, to reiterate. Sky Tech Support and the Openreach guy both mentioned such an adapter. So, anyone?

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I suspect they were thinking of the BT 'Digital Voice' solution, which is proprietary to BT and will only work with a broadband subscription to BT as an ISP  and a BT Smart Hub 2 in place as the router.

https://www.bt.com/help/user-guides/phones/digital-voice/digital-voice-adapter 

[TimmyBGood]

@NicholasG 

As I've said before in this forum, it's worth remembering that BT in various incarnations has had a century of experience with handset hardware: the latecomer ISPs aren't really phone companies at all.

[NicholasG]

If it was just the Openreach engineer who told me about this, the BT thesis would make total sense, since Openreach services sevral providers.

However, I got the exact same information from Sky Tech Support, when I called. I asked, and the guy said not only said that this thing exists, but also specifically mentioned that cutomers were very happy with tyhe way it worked.  (Not to say, of course, that Sky Tech Support could not be mistaken too.)

So, do you know for a fact that this does not exist? Sorry to press the issue, but I have to be sure.

If so, I will drop the package like a hot potato, because at the moment I have an issue with the landline, which is massively inconvenient, and (as I alluded to earlier), with the hub moved to a different room I would be looking at drawing cabling through the whole house, if the booster does not fix things (and from comments online, their effectiveness is really hit and miss).

[TimmyBGood · Accepted solution]

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@NicholasG wrote:

So, do you know for a fact that this does not exist? Sorry to press the issue, but I have to be sure.

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I'm not aware of any widely available domestic technology which would make such a thing possible, outside the proprietary solution which BT Broadband offers.

There are various business-grade DECT offerings designed to provide handset roaming over a greater area: these typically have an IP backhaul and would connect back to a PBX rather than a domestic 'phoneline'.

[TimmyBGood]

@NicholasG 

Note that you cannot now revert the property to have a PSTN (analogue) telephony service because that technology is no longer available for ISPs to order, in advance of nationwide switch-off at the end of 2025.

[TimmyBGood]

@NicholasG 

Unofficially, you could also investigate 'Voice Re-Injection' (VRI) which takes the signal from the socket on the rear of a router and puts it back onto internal phone extension cabling: while this is theoretically entirely viable, ISPs aren't offering subscribers the option of commissioning the service from Openreach.  VRI typically involves messing with the master phone socket, so can't be recommended in this forum.

[NicholasG]

@TimmyBGood

Thank you, good to know this, and I have print-screened it for future reference. I cannot, however, tamper with hardware too much, because I am renting.

Incidentally, when upgrading, I was only told that, with the new set up, if there was a power cut, I would not be able to use my phone. I was not told that I would not be able to revert to the previous phone set up if I decided to downgrade or change my package (even now, still a year or two away from the overall shift). Which is a very oportant point. Thanks for letting me know!

Could I ask something else, since you are very knowlegeable about these things? Is it possible to set up a second hub on the same connection, but in another place of the home? So, say, drill and draw a cable from the other side of the building..? I saw something seemingly like this mentioned ona different forum, but that whole discussion got too technical afterwards, and I couldn't tell whether this was actually a possibility, or if it was just reveries. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@NicholasG wrote:

Is it possible to set up a second hub on the same connection, but in another place of the home? So, say, drill and draw a cable from the other side of the building..?

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For internet, certainly (although the relevant hardware is an ethernet switch rather than a Hub)

That wouldn't solve your telephony issue though: for that you need to relocate the Hub itself on the end of its appropriate incoming cable.

Is your broadband arriving over FTTC (on an Openreach wall socket) or FTTP (via an Openreach ONT)?

[NicholasG]

@TimmyBGood

I believe it is via OpenReach ONT. I confess I had to look it up and I am seeing on Google images the same little white box the engineer installed yesterday.  (This is for something called 'Ultrafast 1'. Also, if it is relevant, I do not have a TV, or a mobile contract with Sky, so it is just broadband and landline.) 

[TimmyBGood]

@NicholasG 

That's a good thing: for FTTP arriving at an ONT the ISP router connects to the ONT over a standard ethernet cable, and ethernet is good for up to 100 metres of cable length.  This means it's potentially relatively simple to acquire a much longer ethernet cable (Cat5e is fine) and route this, either internally or externally, to a more convenient location for the Hub.