Openreach Digital Voice - Losing Phone Calls over existing lines (Impacts BT, Sky, Plusnet, Vodafone and all customers on EE and other networks that use BT Openreach)

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In the UK the dominant player in the market was BT. Much like the break up of Ma Bell into Baby Bells in the US, BT was divided into BT Openreach (B2B) which provides wholesale broadband to many companies like Sky, EE, BT Retail, Vodafone, etc.. 

SO WHEN OPENREACH MAKES A CHANGE IT MATTERS By 2025 Openreach wants to move off the old telephone line system. 

Moving call calls to VOIP. So if you change the package you are on - even if it's labelled the same name, as I did with BT retail. Openreach will remove access to your phone line, and delete your number. 


In my case, this is what I had to do to swap out my VDSL hardware for BTs Smart Hub2 (Only BT hardware has the VOIP software for Digital Voice BTs Phone services over VOIP)

  1. Old BT modem was CHAPS Auth via PPPOE from my ASUS this had to change as for digital voice this was hardware (Smart Hub2) with software for VOIP on board. 
  2. Setup the Non BT router to use Static IP 192.168.1.1 gateway 192.168.1.254 for WAN connections
  3. Save
  4. Then connect the WAN Port of your Router (ASUS in my case) to the BT Smart Hub2 Ethernet Port #1
  5. Connect the old phones or SIP ATAs you use to the Phone OUTPUT (RJ11 Female) port of the Smart Hub2
  6. In the Smart Hub 2 Advanced setup DMZ set all ports to your router 

  7. You can keep DHCP running on the BT Smart Hub Routers as 192.168.1.1 is outside the DHCP server's pool of IPs. Also, the firewall on the BT router will protect all incoming traffic from users on the BT network (except for your Router on 192.168.1.1) 
  8. As all incoming traffic is sent directly to your router's WAN port so the firewall on the WAN blocks all requests except for services running on the router DMZ
  9. Once that is done you are all set. You can administer the BT Smart Hub 2 from your router's network 192.168.1.254 will work fine.
  10. Users on the BT Smart Hub 2 network will have no access to your network behind the router. Double NAT
  11. Services you run on your router (e.g. VPNs) will appear on the internet due to the DMZ on the Smart Hub 2 (See image above you lock this down if needed to just the ports you want, but then you will need to open ports on BOTH your router AND the BT Smart Hub
  12. Dynamic DNS will not work with double NAT so you need to set this up. BEWARE the BT dynamic DNS has not been updated so DNSOMATIC will not work and many providers charge. Best to use a free service like DUCK DNS with a cronjob running on a Linux server inside your router's network. If you use the ASUS OpenVPN or your own OpenVPN remember to add the DNS to the OVPN file manually - Replace the IP in the file which will be 192.168.1.1 with the Duck DNS hostname.