Hi Chris - thanks for getting back to me .... actually I had seen that it was you that seemed to have sorted out this issue for other community members :+).
Thanks for identifying the potential for the TalkTalk hub to stop working - this is actually an important thing for me and since you understand the technical issues and seem to know what you are talking about please can I bore you with the full story in case you can help me come to a decision. There's a bit of a long background story that I need to share, so in advance my apologies for the length of this:
We were "upgraded" to full fibre at the invitation of TalkTalk - I received an email offering a free upgrade to full fibre with digital voice as a "loyal customer". For our use the fibre 35 package that we had was perfectly adequate, but I understand the issue that eventually we will need to change to full fibre when copper is switched off and so thought I'd take advantage of this opportunity. TalkTalk proposed a date but it was not convenient for us so I changed it to an earlier date.
On the agreed date a team from City Fibre came and installed the fibre system. I do have a certain amount of technical understanding, and I knew that the TalkTalk router hub that we had did not have the facility for connecting the telephone. I was concerned that once the fibre system was installed our copper line would be switched off (it has been) and so I asked the installation guys about how I was supposed to connect my landlne. They thought that I should have been already sent a new router by TalkTalk - I hadn't - but fortunately they had a suitable TalkTalk router hub in the back of their van .... I don't know where it came from as it wasn't boxed, but I connected it up and it worked fine for both internet and landline. All good.
After a day or so we noticed that out DECT phone (BT6590) was lighting up every so often when not in use. Checking it out we found that every 30 minutes we were receiving an "incoming call" which was not causing the phone to ring, just registering as an unanswered incoming call. After a day or so these calls are completely filling up our calls log on the phone.
As usual I Googled this and found that other people had found the same issue so I contacted the TalkTalk help line. The agent that I spoke with seemed surprised that we had not been sent a new router for the digital voice service, apologised, and said he'd send me a replacement router. A few days later the Eero 6 hub turned up. Looking at installing it I quickly realised that there was no way to connect the landline to it and looking at the literature I understood that we also needed a "Digital Voice Adapter" which we didn't have. So again I contacted the help line, the agent arranged to send me a DVA and a Grandstream DVA duly arrived. For various reasons I've only just got around to trying to install the Eero / Grandstream with the results outlined in my original post.
According to my understanding the Eero should offer advantages of allowing more connections and the ability to create a network using additional hubs (albeit at quite a cost) but I have been told that it actually has less range than the TalkTalk hub that we are currently using, which is just about on the limit of being able to reach all parts of our house.
For our use the TalkTalk hub works perfectly and just about reaches the whole house. For our use we don't need any additional device connectability, there are only 2 of us in the house and only 3 or 4 devices to connect.
So ....... at face value on my limited understanding I think that the TalkTalk hub offers a better technical solution for us than the Eero:
- Better range without having to buy additional hardware
- Only 1 unit to locate (the hub includes the phone connection)
- Only 1 power socket required / vampire power draw (TalkTalk hub Vs Eero + Grandstream)
But ..... we have this "incoming call" issue that means we have to clear the phone memory every day and leaves us with a minor background concern as to whether it's having any other impact on our service?
To the nub of my dilemma - I don't particularly want to change over to the Eero if it doesn't fix the "incoming call" problem as I don't see that it currently offers me any advantage over what I am currently using, in fact a couple of disadvantages, and if enabling the Eero will stop the TalkTalk hub from working then I won't have the option to go back to it.
Please could I ask your advice:
> Do you know about the 30 minute "incoming call" issue?
> Do you think that changing to the Eero 6 and Grandstream will fix it?
> How does the WiFi range of the Eero 6 compare with the TalkTalk hub in a normal household installation?
> Are there any advantages of changing to the Eero 6 that I would notice? (Couple of phones, laptop and smart TV connected - that's all)
My sincere apologies for this very lengthy message and for putting you on the spot, but to be totally honest I have found it very difficult to get straight answers to this sort of thing from the phone / chat agents who always do their best to be helpful but frequently end up by saying I need to talk to someone else - I've never seemed to be able to find someone with a good all round general overview knowledge of the system as a whole and I'm really hoping that you can give me that (no pressure!!)
Thank you again in advance.
