Does FTTP VOIP sound better than a regular phone line?

Does the voice quality go up if it's all going via fibre? I'm using a regular wireless DECT phone.

It might, if your DECT phone can do HD Voice and your VoIP provider supports it as well.

In reply to a post by essex_man:

It might, if your DECT phone can do HD Voice and your VoIP provider supports it as well.

It's probably from around 2010 I think or even earlier. The phone line part of my BT line is rather long 750m to the cabinet and 4.9km to the exchange.

Compared to some of teh VoIP I was working on back in the 90's then yes, way better. Better than over FTTC - probaby not noticable.

I can't speak of the VOIP sound quality of FTTP vs FTTC. However, I can confirm that Digital Voice does offer better sound quality than what I was getting previously under analogue phone line on FTTC with BT.

Particularly, if you have had problems with noise on the line. Any crackles that you may have experienced in the past from Analogue phone service is completely gone from DV. The dial tone will be crystal clear.

Though, it also depends on the line quality of the user from the other end. If they also have Digital Voice then it will be heard clearly from both ends. If they have a distorted line then you will hear their line and might mistake it as yours.

Even on the BT Advanced Digital Home phone it shows HD voice printed on it. If you're not having noise margin related issues under your 750 meter line and your connection is stable then Digital Voice shouldn't be a problem. The phone including vintage phone connects to the router rather than the master socket.

Master socket will not return any dial tone if you migrate to Digital Voice. You will naturally have better sound quality even on ADSL. I remember having Skype calls internationally including Skype to Skype as that's VOIP too and they were generally always clearer than Analogue phone.

If you have a good analogue line its very unlikely you will notice the difference.
If you have noise on the line at all you will notice the difference.

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by SpeedySlow:

Does the voice quality go up if it's all going via fibre? I'm using a regular wireless DECT phone.

It can't sound better than a fault-free analogue line because of the limitations of the hardware that will be in the DECT base and the ATA, but it shouldn't be worse. If you want one of the various HD voice implementations then you need IP handsets, a provider that supports HD voice, and interconnects to other providers that also support it.

Update: VoIP is live and it is a much better sounding service, before the line was rather quiet in sound level and noisy but now it's much louder and clear. In the past openreach had said the line was ok on their machines but just long so probably picking up interferences.

To clarify I had FTTC with a non digital phone line before the switch, now I've got FTTP from fibre heroes and the phone connects to the router and not an incoming analogue line.

Thankyou to everyone who replied, so it looks like if you've already got a good phone line then nothing will change but if it's long and noisy then yes it will sound much better.

Edited by SpeedySlow (Thu 11-Jul-24 19:54:06)

I'm glad to read your experience! I had the same problem but with analogue phone line. Even migrating to FTTC from ADSL did not solve this issue. I also had problems with internet drop outs when connecting phone into master socket manually and picking up the phone to answer the phone calls would sometimes cause drop outs. This is why I had to unplug old vintage phone since it also had no option to mute the ring tone. This happened even with FTTC when I was with TalkTalk.

However, migrating to Digital Voice+FTTC with BT 2 years ago completely solved the problem. As there is no longer dial tone when you plug phone into master socket it is no longer interfering with the broadband connection.

Digital Voice dial tone has no scratching tone similar to what you'd experience with a radio when the antenna is not aligned properly to the radio station. That's one of the first thing I experienced straight away when switching to the new DV service.

I now have over 60+ days connection uptime and connecting at full 80/20Mbps because of Digital Voice so that's one extra benefit that this brings. Of-course in your case with FTTP naturally it will no longer be a problem.

I knew my connection drop outs before were associated with the miss calls on analogue as when I was dialing 1471 the last call number seemed to coincide with the drop out. Apart from that there were never any other random drop outs to the internet connection since my migration to FTTC from ADSL EO Line. So when switching to Digital Voice there's no extra noise interference caused on the copper line.

Now with Digital Voice the handset also gives you option to put the phone on silent mode and even block nuisance calls and change the ring volume. Though, I've not needed to block any calls yet since changing phone number I don't get these spam calls.

Only downside with DV is that you are dependent on the ISP router being supplied and a 100% stable internet connection. So if you have a power cut the phone will also be affected unless there is battery backup with FTTP. You can't use your own third party router with Digital Voice. Maybe it may be possible with a third party VOIP service with adapter. Otherwise with DV the pros outweigh the cons.