BT Home Hub 2

[Norphy]

There isn't really an appropriate forum for this question, so I'll stick it here. I hope that when Edugeek 3 comes along, they're going to do a lot of consolidation!

 

Anyway.

 

We had BT's FTTP product fitted a couple of weeks ago. Part of the package was BT Digital Voice, which is their VOIP offering. So far, so good.

 

This:

 

Is where I'm living at the moment. There are two buildings: The main house where my son, my partner and I are living at the moment is marked A. The other house, B, is the cottage where my in-laws are living. There is an ethernet cable which runs between point A and point B on the picture, and there is a wireless access point in the cottage which transmits the wireless network in that building. Both buildings are old, probably 18th century if not older. distance between the two buildings is only about 20m but they both have incredibly thick walls, at least a metre thick and the stone that they're made of is like granite. Possibly it is granite, I'm not a stonemason so I don't know. All of that is why the access point in building B is necessary, there's just no way that Wi-Fi will penetrate both walls with any kind of usable signal at the end of it.

 

The issue is with the telephone. When we got the phones and the router, I rather foolishly assumed that the phones that BT provide are wifi units as you have to pair them with the BT Smart Hub 2 using the WPS button. I thought "Oh good, we'll be able to pair the handset in the main house, carry it over to the cottage and that'll work over their access point". Oh no. That would be too simple. Turns out, the WPS button on the smart hub is actually dual function: It not only activates WPS for a Wi-Fi device to pair to the hub, it's also a DECT pairing button as well. The Smart Hub is not only a wireless access point and router, it's also a DECT base station. Whatever individual or team thought that was a good idea needs punching somewhere very sensitive.

 

This brings us to the problem: The phone doesn't work in the cottage for the same reason that Wi-Fi doesn't. In fairness, even with the old analogue phone line and DECT phones, it never did. Hopefully now, however, we might be able to do something about it. There's a BS6312 socket in the back of the Home Hub 2 and from what I understand, you can connect a normal wired phone to that.

 

So my question is, without running a phone cable across the grass, is there a way to get decent phone service in the cottage with what we've got? Getting rid of the phones and using an alternative service isn't an option, we've taken a contract out on this now so we're stuck with them.

[MatthewL]

For the cost of some telephone cable I would run that across and linking it into the socket on the router and just plug a cordless or corded phone in. Could buy the cable (can use CAT5 if you have spare) and a socket for peanuts and you have a phone. Other option would be to run 2 cables, one for phone and one for data and put an AP in there too improving coverage for them.

 

If its just the phone I would get some CAT5, some conduit and sink it in the garden borders.

[bald_pig]

You should be able to split the existing ethernet cable, and use 2 pairs for ethernet, and 2 pairs for the phone using the phone socket on the hub. You won't be able to use POE and you'll be limited to 100mbps instead of gigabit, but I imagine that would be sufficient in this case!