BT SmartHub 2, Digital Voice and EMFs

My broadband router was recently changed to the latest BT Smart Hub 2 due to the switchover to Digital Voice. All the old copper landline phone services are being switched off, meaning that your existing phones will no longer work – unless you connect them to a dedicated socket on the rear of the new router instead of the old wall sockets.

Many people have opted to ditch the landline service and instead rely solely on their mobile phones, which admittedly does save you some money; however, as I suffer from a degree of EHS¹, I wanted to keep my old phones. I have three of them, all running from a 3-way splitter at the wall socket. Fortunately, it was simplicity itself to remove the splitter from the wall socket and connect it to the router (about 2.5 metres away) using an extension phone cable, and everything is working fine; in fact, I’d say that the call quality is actually better than it was, despite the the fact that the broadband is still using the copper wire coming into the house! The answering machine still seems to work as well, although BT said that it wouldn’t. They automatically provide their 1571 message service anyway, so it’s not a problem either way.

However, that’s not the main issue. The new router, as its default setting, was of course transmitting a Wi-Fi signal. I was able to disable this in the router control panel settings in a browser window as expected, yet my Acoustimeter was still detecting a strong signal from the router. Apparently, BT had decided to reinstate their public Wi-Fi service on the router, despite me having opted out of this several years ago (this is where a portion of the Wi-Fi bandwidth is reserved to power their public network). I had to go on to the BT website and find the setting to opt out of this again, which of course means that I can’t use their public Wi-Fi when out and about – but does anyone use public Wi-Fi these days? It’s seldom worth the effort to input your details when you are likely to be added to some anonymous data provider’s list just so you can access a bit of Wi-Fi. Get a decent data plan on your phone, you cheapskate!

Now, back to the router. The control panel stated clearly that, ‘All wireless functionality on your hub has been completely disabled’. Yet the Acoustimeter was still picking up a strong signal – this turned out to be a DECT phone signal for a cordless phone, and apparently there is no way to disable this. Now, clearly anyone upgrading who already owned a cordless phone would most likely simply plug the base station into the back of the router and it would work as before – why then, does the router emit this signal with no way to turn it off? The answer is that BT want you to buy their own newer DECT phones with built-in Amazon Alexa, which will automatically connect to the Smart Hub 2 out of the box, although you will also need to have the Wi-Fi enabled of course.

Many of my clients who have a cordless phone are advised to use ECO-DECT models where the signal is only transmitted when on a call, and are no doubt expecting that to still be the case when they plug the base station into the BT Hub. I’m sure they will be surprised to find that they’re now being blasted by TWO sources of EMFs, one of which is transmitting 24/7!

This is not a satisfactory state of affairs for anyone suffering from EHS, and also a blatant lie from BT as ‘all wireless functionality‘ has clearly NOT been disabled! I have written to them to complain about this, and in the meantime I’ve managed to reduce the DECT emissions to a more acceptable level by covering the router with a Faraday cage and a screening pouch.

Here is the letter I’ve sent to BT – feel free to adapt this to your own situation if you wish to write to them:

1. Electro Hyper-Sensitivity [↩]