Fibre Broadband and telephone line

[Margareth1940]

Good evening. I had wanted to change to fibre broadband and been told phone line would be voice data with fibre. We have 3 phones in the house. All cordless. Main one is plugged into main socket. 2nd one is just connected via electric socket and 3rd one is plugged into electric socket and line extension cable. The talk talk advisor told me today that if I change to fibre/voice data only one phone will work. Just the main one. This is not really an option for us as I live with elderly mum and need phones at various points through the house. Can anyone advise is this correct or have I misunderstood the Talk Talk agent. I appreciate any advice. Thanks.

[KeithFrench]

No problem, glad to help.

[Margareth1940]

Thanks a lot for all information.

[KeithFrench]

So long as they are cordless handsets connected to the same base station, then yes, there is nothing from a technical point of view to get in the way. If you don't order Digital Voice with the upgrade though, you may not be able to add it at a later date.

[Margareth1940]

Thanks a lot for this. I did think it was strange if only one phone worked. As I say we have one master and then 2 others. So from your experience Keith I would be ok going ahead with the upgrade as all phones would continue to work as normal?

[KeithFrench]

The Grandstream DVA (if you have the eero solution) or the Hub 2 allow connection of a standard landline phone to the DVA or Hub 2. This represents the same basic limitations of your soon-to-be redundant, Master Socket. Each phone has something called a REN number (Ringer Equivalence Number) and in the old days, you could connect multiple corded phones to the line. You used to connect them via extension phone sockets or double adapters etc. Each one has a REN number and you added those numbers together and so long as it didn't exceed six, you were OK all phones would work fine. In reality, it is best to limit this to four not six.

Your cordless phone system's base station will have a REN number and it is only this that will connect to the phone socket on the DVA or Hub 2. It is totally irrelevant how many cordless handsets you have registered to this one base station.

Take it from an ex-telephone engineer you'll be fine like this. My cordless phone system only has two handsets, but that works perfectly.

[Margareth1940]

This is what I was offered and told only one phone would work and none of the others.

[KeithFrench]

Please confirm exactly what you are being offered when you say "fibre/voice data only", that sounds like a contradiction. Do you mean that you will have Digital Voice with your Full Fibre? If so, all that you do is connect the cordless base station to the Hub 2 or Grandstream DVA (if with an eero). All handsets will work fine as they connect to the base station.