Youfibre Questions

I have preordered youfibre, which is due to be installed in my area (Chorley) around August time.
At the moment I have FTTC with plusnet.

Have a few questions for anyone that already has this on the phone side:

Does caller ID work on this?
Can normal cordless BT phones be used? (assume the phone base station is plugged into the fibre modem?)
assume 1571 will not work on this now, but the answer phone on the cordless system will work?
calls to mobiles are 17p per min?

thanks

If you have an FTTP service you will have to use VOIP for phone calls. You can either use services such as Sipgate or Voipfone or Youfibre do have their own service. Sipgate is probably the cheapest as there is no standard month large, but you would need to provide your own equipment, such as the Gigaset N300A VOIP/DECT base station and Gigaset DECT phones.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

If you have an FTTP service you will have to use VOIP for phone calls. You can either use services such as Sipgate or Voipfone or Youfibre do have their own service. Sipgate is probably the cheapest as there is no standard month large, but you would need to provide your own equipment, such as the Gigaset N300A VOIP/DECT base station and Gigaset DECT phones.

Thanks for the reply. Sipgate looks a good solution.

Michael makes a very good point - you absolutely don't have to tie your 'landline' number any more to your broadband operator. You can choose to have it hosted by YouFibre or indeed by another VoIP provider and it runs 'over the top' of your broadband connection.

To minimise any service interruption, a move to port your number out should always be down after your new connection with YouFibre is fully up and running. This is because the act of porting the number that is associated with your Plusnet/FTTC service will cause the Plusnet broadband to cease. The downside here is that there will be a relatively short period of dual running - but then you get to keep your number if that is important to you.

Edited by Pheasant (Mon 16-May-22 18:11:53)

Yes, I agree, and looking at various reviews on youfibre, things don’t always start well, so dual running is probably the right thing to do, till it’s all working right.

A further question on phone connections.

So, the fibre comes into the house and into the ONT.
I think the youfibre ONT has a phone connection as well as ethernet.
Ethernet connection from the ONT to the eero router.
Assume this is where the gigaset N300 voip box would plug in also via ethernet.
This gives me 3 dect cordless phones.
My question is can a hardwired phone socket also be used for a fixed phone and if so would this plug into the ONT, or would a ATA adapter be needed? (is the phone socket actually live if using SIPGATE voip service?)

Edited by moose173 (Tue 17-May-22 13:08:53)

Assume this is where the gigaset N300 voip box would plug in also via ethernet.

If you are using a third party / indy VoIP provider and using say something like a Gigaset N300 as the VoIP client / termination point, then yes the Gigaset connects via its Ethernet port into your LAN (eero LAN port say) where it will get an internet connection, like any other regular wired device than need internet access

My question is can a hardwired phone socket also be used for a fixed phone and if so would this plug into the ONT, or would a ATA adapter be needed? (is the phone socket actually live if using SIPGATE voip service?)

If I’m understanding you correctly, you wish to make use of your existing phone extension wiring to send the analogue output from an ATA to ‘regular’ analogue handsets. If so yes this is possible - it’s called voice re-injection. The key is to make sure that the master socket is isolated completely from the incoming PSTN line from the cabinet / exchange beforehand. Then take the analogue port output of your ATA (if using 3rd pet VoIP) or the analogue voice port on the ONT (if using YF digital voice service) and distribute it by connecting into your extension cabling.

Pheasant has covered the basics check out the VOIP forum if you want more information. TLDR make sure you do things in the correct order - do not cancel your Plusnet too soon otherwise you will loose the phone number associated with it. If I understand the process correctly you do not cancel your Plusnet at all you migrate your phone number to Sipgate (or other) and that action should be enough to cancel your Plusnet.

Edited by think26872 (Tue 17-May-22 21:50:21)

so, update on this, I bought a Gigaset VOIP base unit and new phones, ready for this install, which was meant to be August. Set this up on the fixed land line for now and will change over to full VOIP when needed, however, August came and went. install date then got changed to October by Youfibre. As we got near to this, then then said they didn't have a date now when it would it would be installed in the area. So its not looking great, and meanwhile my contract with Plusnet is now up and increased until I re-sign a new contract or leave.

Edited by moose173 (Thu 15-Sep-22 12:02:44)

You should be able VOIP to work via your Plusnet connection now. Likely calls will not cost so much as via Plusnet.

You could ask Plusnet retentions if you could just have a twelve month contract, rather than the eighteen months that is often offered.