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A colleague of mine lives in a house with a homehighway socket (which appears to be an old ISDN2 system) she currently uses it as an analogue line for her calls as she cannot find her master socket. Her line rental from BT is for normal analogue line.

My question is this, would ADSL work if she plugged her router into the home highway socket where her phone is currently plugged into?

Nope, because the line will need to be changed over from digital before you can even consider using DSL on it, as well as the fact an ISDN package wont work as a DSL package, she would need to change to an actual DSL package. Completely different technologies, at every step including the home, line format and exchange.

When my dad moved over from ISDN2 to DSL a few years back (he lives in the sticks, so has always had to use bonded ISDN to get decent speed till 2007 iirc) BT wanted to charge him £100+ to change the line format, dunno how much he paid in the end.

Actually, the situation might not be so bad now, as I have heard of ADSL over ISDN, however I am not sure if BT have ever implemented this technology, or indeed how good the technology is.

Hi,

Would it give her any indication to the service she is receiving on her BT Phone bill as she thinks she is just paying for a normal BT line with a normal telephone and is under the impression that the home highway box is an extension to the master socket.

if its just a box, and the ISDN isnt active, then it should be okay, but whether you could run it through the box im not sure, as the circuitry is likely to be different.

If the line is digital though, it will need changing, BT will be best placed to advise you, but you can tell yourself from the quality of the line, if its still ISDN it will be absolutely crystal clear, dial 17070 from the line and see how clear it is.

ok thanks

Hi,

Another question.

Did the old BT home highway used to work if you plugged it into a normal telephone extension lead?

The reason i ask, my user has just made me aware that she thinkgs there was originally a socket in the place of the Home Highway box that is an extension of the main BT socket.

All the Homehighway stuff was concelled many years ago and after speaking to BT Technical support (who hadn't even heard of ISDN) says my user pays for a standard phone line.

If this is the case, i am wondering if i can disconnect the home highway and patch in a standard socket into the extension cable.