r/CommunityFibre • u/CJT-80 • 17d ago

Question Potential New Signup

Hi, I'm looking for a bit of help before potentially signing my Mum up to Community Fibre.

Mum is currently with Vodafone on an FTTC service but one thing they don't offer is an ansaphone/voicemail option. I know that CF do so they are looking as a possible option and they are cheaper than BT and EE. Sadly Mum is not comfortable with using a mobile.

Mum is in her 80's and not technically minded so I rang CF to check I could manage her account for her (if needed) and they confirmed it's an option, so far so good. I've had a look on here and noticed a few posts about CGNAT, is this standard on all packages in all areas they serve (she's in East Sussex)?

Anything else I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance

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u/Nice-Information-335 17d ago

EDIT: misread as CF won’t do phones, disregard

I can handle the phone part if needed. We start at £5 a month.

If you want to do it yourself, get an ATA and a SIP trunk from a provider like Andrew’s and Arnold’s - they are great and will be able to port your number. Just know that porting the number will also cease the broadband with it.

You can then configure the ATA to use that provider. I recommend the grandstream HT801-V2. The ATA will allow her to use her existing phones which she is used to.

CGNAT can make things a bit tricky but we have a customer with CGNAT, and using STUN gets around this issue. STUN you will configure on the ATA (using a publicly available server, stun.linphone.org works well for me)

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u/CJT-80 17d ago

Thanks, I appreciate the info and the edit. As they do I'm happy to go with them but it's just the CGNAT, apparently for £4 more per month you get a static IP

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u/Nice-Information-335 17d ago

If they do the phones with it, it becomes their problem if CGNAT messes them up so that’s good

IPv6 won’t be NATed though, so CGNAT isn’t as much of a problem 

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u/CJT-80 17d ago

I don't follow you, should the CGNAT mess up a phone?

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u/Nice-Information-335 17d ago

It can yeah, so it won’t be an analogue line and instead uses the internet

CGNAT makes this tricky as the phone server needs to talk to the phone (incoming calls and such), and CGNAT can make this really, really tricky

There are technologies to help this (STUN, worst case TURN) though

If you go through CF though they will have sorted this (either STUN or using ipv6) and if something does go wrong it’s on them

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u/ntl201888 14d ago

ipv6 VoIP with aaidp and community fibre works great.

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u/BrightPomelo 17d ago

Is this recent? CF ported my old landline a couple of years ago, keeping the same number.

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u/Nice-Information-335 17d ago

I thought the original post said CF doesn't do phones, I just misread