Planning to ditch landline and use SIP for virtual landline

NFH

I currently pay £38.27 per month to Be Unlimited for a landline and 15Mbps broadband. When I next move home, I'm planning to ditch the physical landline and spend a similar monthly amount only on broadband, perhaps from Virgin Media on one of their business packages in order to reduce contention and customer service issues.

For a fixed line phone number, I've bought a nice 020 central London phone number from Flextel which can be pointed at a SIP address. I plan to use FreeVoipDeal for outgoing calls because, provided I top up by €12.31 every 4 months, I get free calls to fixed lines in most industrialised countries. Even better, the credit is not used buying these inclusive calls but can be spent on chargeable calls. The downsides are that I won't be able to phone 999/112 (except from my mobile) and I won't get inclusive 0845/0870 calls, although the latter won't be a problem after Article 21 of the Consumer Rights Directive is enacted next year.

I plan to buy a SIP phone such as a Grandstream GXP2100 for £61 as a main desk phone and to use a SIP client on my iPhone as a cordless phone around the home (and while abroad). I've never liked having to use a separate cordless phone for my fixed line anyway.

Is there anything else I should think about? Are there any other products or services I ought to consider?

thefirs

Sipgate would have provided a free 020 number, and you can if you wish port a landline number over to them. They can also establish a geographical location for any emergency calls.

NFH

thefirs wrote: »

Sipgate would have provided a free 020 number

Thanks, but I got my Flextel number for free. Although I paid £80, it was using credit I had received for incoming Flextel calls which can be used only to buy numbers.

JohalaReewi

NFH wrote: »

Is there anything else I should think about? Are there any other products or services I ought to consider?

You say you are ditching the landline and going broadband only.
Technically, broadband operates over a fixed landline so while you can stop using the landline for calls, you will still get landline rental.

It is possible to get internet access by other means and dump the landline completely and you mention Virgin. Are you in a Virgin cable area? If not, Virgin will provide their broadband via a landline. If you are, will they provide internet access without taking a phone package?

NFH

JohalaReewi wrote: »

Technically, broadband operates over a fixed landline so while you can stop using the landline for calls, you will still get landline rental.

That applies only to ADSL, which I have now. I don't want ADSL next time because of the requirement to have a physical phone line as well. Another possibility is ISPs like Hyperoptic, founded by the same people as Be Unlimited.

JohalaReewi wrote: »

It is possible to get internet access by other means and dump the landline completely and you mention Virgin. Are you in a Virgin cable area? If not, Virgin will provide their broadband via a landline. If you are, will they provide internet access without taking a phone package?

I understand that Virgin Media's broadband is via fibre, unlike ADSL which uses the copper cables of a phone line (at least for the final connection into the home). Although Virgin Media sometimes try to bundle a phone line with broadband, I understand that this is far from mandatory.

Cycrow

Virgin have 2 services, they have virgin cable and virgin national.

virgin national is thier adsl service and requires a landline to work.

The virgin cable service doesn't require a landline, but only works in a cabled area.

You usually get a discount on the broadband if you have a landline.
and if you have the TV as well, the discount for both is about the same as the line rental, so ineffect, you get the line rental for free.

check on the virgin site to make sure you are in a cabled area and can get thier fibre broadband