Can I use a BT phone if I'm not a BT customer?
toodlepipfornow
Posts: 73 Forum Member
✭
Hi
Does anyone know if I can use a BT phone if I'm not a BT customer?
Are UK telephone points compatible, regardless of what make of telephone you have?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Does anyone know if I can use a BT phone if I'm not a BT customer?
Are UK telephone points compatible, regardless of what make of telephone you have?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
0
Comments
Just remember that with the exception of Virgin Media and those in the Hull area, pretty much every phone line in the country is actually operated by Openreach. The various providers simply rent the lines from Openreach (in effect) so essentially whoever you rent your line from you are using the same systems to make and receive calls.
And even if you have a Virgin Media phone line or live in the Hull area any UK spec phone should work at least for the basics like making and receiving calls.
There are some small things to consider. Virgin Media is an amalgamation of a number of different cable companies, all of whom built their telephone networks in different ways, using equipment from lots of different companies. This means that while the phone line will work fine for making/receiving calls, sometimes caller ID won't work properly on Virgin. This is because the equipment can't supply it in the same way that BT's equipment does, and many UK phones only work with the BT standard.
Sky and TalkTalk do use their own equipment in the telephone exchange (they rent the physical phone line from Openreach and have it connected to their own network). As far as I know, there's no compatibility issues at all, it will work just as well as a true BT phone line, including caller ID
Not as far as I know - I don't have a huge amount of experience with non-BT lines but 17070 etc works totally differently (I think TalkTalk's 17070 just tells you your phone number and doesn't provide line testing services, Sky's 17070 is a consumer-ised version that walks you through a test)
It wouldn't make much financial sense to do it any other way. The ADSL equipment that Sky/TalkTalk use can do telephony very easily, so why pay Openreach for the extra wiring and equipment?
There's some long winded answers here, a very simple Yes you can use a BT branded phone if your not a BT customer would be been ample.
They're "long winded" because there's more to the story than your oversimplification.
No there isn't more to the story at all. ;-)
Which is why you never hear of people complaining because they pay for caller ID from Virgin and it doesn't work. Or that their old rotary phone doesn't work because they need to get their telephone company to switch on pulse dialing.
I agree, the OP seems to be asking will his BT branded phone work if BT are not the CP (communications provider) and the simple answer is yes, a BT branded phone will be produced in a factory, that supplies phones for lots of company's , you wouldn't worry if the phone was a 'Binatone' or 'Panasonic' , and a BT phone will be fundementally the same as them, maybe more bells and whistles, or less but basically the same.
Ultimately , phones should conform to a signalling standard CCITT ( now called ITU-T)
Except when they don't, because you have a Virgin line, and whatever cable company originally built the network in your area, decided to buy American-spec equipment which only outputs Bellcore standard caller ID - which doesn't work with your British spec phone.
Sometimes you can't simplify something down to a single sentence without losing a lot of important detail.
Funny that my BT branded phone works perfectly including caller display on VM then, the OP asked can I use a BT phone if not a BT customer, even if it were not capable of displaying CLI (as far as you or I know it may not even have a display but it almost certainly would display CLI) he or she could 'use' it on VM, or Sky or TT's 'network', unless it were a very old rotary dial 706 or 746 'BT' phone and I doubt that's the case
Call Guardian just blocks everything including genuine calls when it's switched on, even allowed VIP numbers when it's set to Allowed. I thought it only blocked calls you set to block.
If you turn Call Guardian off do you see the number of the caller in the display on the phone? If you don't then that will explain why Call Guardian is blocking everything.
I get the same using a BT8500 on a SKY phone line.....I've put a few friends numbers into my phonelist....also given them VIP status and still they get the guardian message and wont let them directly through to me until I press 1 to allow them through. I've got so peed off I've switched the call guardian feature off which is annoying as it's the reason I bought the phone in the first place.
If you can't see the calling number then the call blocking exemptions won't work.
Line rental and fibre broadband are through Sky
and CLI is enabled and working
However, if your friends' numbers are withheld or unavailable (e.g. because they're using an Indirect Access provider or VoIP) then the call blocking system won't work correctly. Check with 1471.
looks like there is an issue with this phone...not read all the thread yet tho.....
https://community.bt.com/t5/Phones/Problems-with-call-guardian-on-BT8500/td-p/1360921/page/3