Advice re inactive phone line please

staggered

My dad is looking to switch his phone service away from Virgin after they increased prices again.

He's looking to move to one of the cheap landline-only packages, either from BT or the Post Office (landline only is £11.49/mth at Post Office - he doesn't want broadband).

He was a BT customer about 20 years ago and there's still a BT socket in the house.

I wasn't sure whether it would still be working after 20 years so we plugged a phone in (old-style phone, not one of the cordless ones).

There wasn't a dialling tone - does this simply mean the line needs re-activating or does it mean a new one needs installing?

TIA

Robin9

Probably disconnected at the exchange or in a cabinet.

New line doesn't generally mean a complete new line - as long as it's in the BT socket it will just need connecting. But you may have to pay for a new line.