BT home hub/phone replacement?

Hi folks
I have BT broadband and have one of their home hubs and phone combos.
Everything is working fine at the moment but I did wonder if the hub
and/or phone bit the dust what could I replace it with?.
I use their free anytime phone service. Can any landline phone be
plugged into the hub to carry on using this?. Could I use any wireless
router if the hub packs in? or would I have to get another hub/phone
from BT
Cheers
Steve

Steve wrote:
> Hi folks
> I have BT broadband and have one of their home hubs and phone combos.
> Everything is working fine at the moment but I did wonder if the hub
> and/or phone bit the dust what could I replace it with?.


> I use their free anytime phone service. Can any landline phone be
> plugged into the hub to carry on using this?.

If you mean "Broadband Talk Anytime", for which you pay a premium over your
broadband subscription, then yes, you can plug a phone into the back of the
hub to use the service (*). You may have to adjust some hub settings.
Most (all?) BT consumer broadband accounts get offered the Broadband Talk
Evenings and Weekends rate inclusive with the broadband rental.

If you use an ordinary phone, you loose the "wide band audio" (because an
ordinary phone only does 3kHz audio range) which does sound better if
talking to another wide-band enabled device.

Also, BT supply the "Softphone" PC application, which allows you to make
calls from a computer over the same service.



> Could I use any wireless
> router if the hub packs in? or would I have to get another hub/phone
> from BT

You can use another router, but you will then run into a problem of how to
connect a phone to the Broadband Talk service. Your options would be:

a) another BT home hub. If it failed, I would ask BT for a replacement.

b) another BT compatible with Broadband Talk router. The 220v and 2500v
being the two I recall in the BT range

c) any other router, plus a separate voice adaptor which works with the BT
service (could be either a complete voice unit, ie. an ethernet phone, or a
telephone adaptor box, such as the BT 10v). I have heard of people working
out the settings for the BT Broadband Talk service and making non BT
hardware operate with it. But you need to find out a few settings.

d) any other router with integral voice adaptor, provided you've worked out
how to insert the BT settings into the adaptor.


Currently BT don't currently hand out the settings for non-BT voice
adaptors.




(* assuming they've not changed the configuration since when I was working
on its design).


- Nigel (ex BT R&D).


--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

Thanks for that Nigel helps a lot.
Cheers
Steve

On Sat, 1 Dec 2007 02:40:19 -0800 (PST), Steve
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Hi folks
>I have BT broadband and have one of their home hubs and phone combos.
>Everything is working fine at the moment but I did wonder if the hub
>and/or phone bit the dust what could I replace it with?.
>I use their free anytime phone service. Can any landline phone be
>plugged into the hub to carry on using this?. Could I use any wireless
>router if the hub packs in? or would I have to get another hub/phone
>from BT
>Cheers
>Steve


The Home Hub is rubbish.Its slow and constantly resynchs.

I got BT to send me a free Voyager 2500 which works seamlessly with BT
talk and is a far far better modem/router.

You will have serious problems getting any other modem to work with BT
talk.