Living without a landline

CheeseDreams

I had a land-line I never used as part of a Virgin package when I rented.

When I bought a property in Jan I got rid of it. My phone is now my mobile and my WiFi is £10 per month through a mobile company kit that cost £40. I bought a free view box I could record on so I wouldn't miss TiVo and could watch live TV. I honestly never use it! Which has really surprised me! I've completely pivoted to only watching TV on catch up services and swapping round pay for providers like Netflix and NowTV periodically.

I'm saving about £40 a month. I'll never go back! 

sarah1972

Edace2020 said:

We have a phone line because of the internet but we unplugged the phone itself as we only ever received nuisance calls, despite never giving our number to anyone other than family. This was about 3 years ago and we don't miss it at all.

You don’t need a landline because of the internet if you go fibre. 

I had mine disconnected last year after getting fibre broadband, saves me a fortune in line rental 

lr1277

I was told the following many years ago so I keep my landline because it has a mini-power supply and so will work in the event of a power cut. Obviously need a bog standard phone that does not need electricity to work.

I don't know if you can say the same if your mobile phone is not charged or even for mobile phone masts.

Doing some googling, there are more details here:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/problems/landlines-and-power-cuts

According to the above article at some point it will be able to make phone calls during a power cut. However no date is given and the article is not dated.

anita116

I kept my landline as the internet was cheaper with the landline included than without.   I don't make calls from it but I do find it useful when I can't find my mobile phone.

wild666

I have a landline with a phone plugged in but never use it. If/When I decide to change my BB provider I will choose one that doesn't require a LL as part of the service.

Madmel

We moved to VOIP when we got FTTP. A kind forumite recommended Sipgate. After a bit of faff, we were able to keep our landline number so it doesn't sound different to anyone calling us. Our Sipgate contract is free - we only pay for outgoing calls but as my mobile contract has unlimited calls, we use that. I put £20 on the Sipgate account in June and it is all still there. We were able to keep our existing cordless handsets but needed a box to connect the base station to the router. A very nice salesman helped with that. No regrets so far for ditching the landline.

ButtersUK

Madmel said:

We moved to VOIP when we got FTTP. A kind forumite recommended Sipgate. After a bit of faff, we were able to keep our landline number so it doesn't sound different to anyone calling us. Our Sipgate contract is free - we only pay for outgoing calls but as my mobile contract has unlimited calls, we use that. I put £20 on the Sipgate account in June and it is all still there. We were able to keep our existing cordless handsets but needed a box to connect the base station to the router. A very nice salesman helped with that. No regrets so far for ditching the landline.

That's all changed now .... no free accounts.

MarzipanCrumble

Get rid of your landline. I have a SIM only mobile (cost about £6.75 / month but you can get a lot cheaper) and do all my calling and receiving via my mobile. (You don'tget rid of your landline rental - this is part of the utilities charge for having a broadband connection equivalent to standing charge forelec/gas connection).

I can change with a month's notice my mobile call provider whenever I want - number is portable. The only reason to think about retention of landline and its number is if you have a business or other reasons that the number is important. (Or you have avery poor mobile connection)

ButtersUK

MarzipanCrumble said:

Get rid of your landline. I have a SIM only mobile (cost about £6.75 / month but you can get a lot cheaper) and do all my calling and receiving via my mobile. (You don'tget rid of your landline rental - this is part of the utilities charge for having a broadband connection equivalent to standing charge forelec/gas connection).

I can change with a month's notice my mobile call provider whenever I want - number is portable. The only reason to think about retention of landline and its number is if you have a business or other reasons that the number is important. (Or you have avery poor mobile connection)

I have to admit I'm coming round to that option. It gets used less and less.

I've recently been looking at options now that Openreach have laid their fibre cables in the street thus allowing us to have FTTP. Some in the street have already done it.

It seems to upgrade from ADSL to FTTP  with speeds of around 80 to 100 Mbps BUT at the same time to do away with the landline and (hence the old geographical phone number) results in a monthly cost similar to that which I currently pay. The obvious difference being you've got fibre all the way back to the exchange resulting in, apparently,  faster broadband ... but you've got no landline phone any more.... unless, of course, as mentioned above, you use VOIP ... and pay for it  ... it looks as though Andrews and Arnold are quite competetive in providing VOIP on a pay as you go basis especially as Sipgate basic/starter is now gone.

I'm currently with Idnet on a monthly contract but the price for FTTP with Andrews & Arnold, Zen or Giganet aren't all that different and Talktalk might be cheaper (but they're not for me, thank you). Installation cost varies a bit between them and some strongly recommend you get a new, pre configured, router but we're talking perhaps £50 difference at the outset with reasonably similar monthly costs.

If they weren't going to disconnect the copper pairs in 2025 I might have kept the landline (due to the ability to use the phone in an emergency during a power cut) but seeing as they ARE doing away with the old fashioned copper wires that we all got so used to then, in my view, there's less reason not to change.

brewerdave

ButtersUK said:

MarzipanCrumble said:

Get rid of your landline. I have a SIM only mobile (cost about £6.75 / month but you can get a lot cheaper) and do all my calling and receiving via my mobile. (You don'tget rid of your landline rental - this is part of the utilities charge for having a broadband connection equivalent to standing charge forelec/gas connection).

I can change with a month's notice my mobile call provider whenever I want - number is portable. The only reason to think about retention of landline and its number is if you have a business or other reasons that the number is important. (Or you have avery poor mobile connection)

I have to admit I'm coming round to that option. It gets used less and less.

I've recently been looking at options now that Openreach have laid their fibre cables in the street thus allowing us to have FTTP. Some in the street have already done it.

It seems to upgrade from ADSL to FTTP  with speeds of around 80 to 100 Mbps BUT at the same time to do away with the landline and (hence the old geographical phone number) results in a monthly cost similar to that which I currently pay. The obvious difference being you've got fibre all the way back to the exchange resulting in, apparently,  faster broadband ... but you've got no landline phone any more.... unless, of course, as mentioned above, you use VOIP ... and pay for it  ... it looks as though Andrews and Arnold are quite competetive in providing VOIP on a pay as you go basis especially as Sipgate basic/starter is now gone.

I'm currently with Idnet on a monthly contract but the price for FTTP with Andrews & Arnold, Zen or Giganet aren't all that different and Talktalk might be cheaper (but they're not for me, thank you). Installation cost varies a bit between them and some strongly recommend you get a new, pre configured, router but we're talking perhaps £50 difference at the outset with reasonably similar monthly costs.

If they weren't going to disconnect the copper pairs in 2025 I might have kept the landline (due to the ability to use the phone in an emergency during a power cut) but seeing as they ARE doing away with the old fashioned copper wires that we all got so used to then, in my view, there's less reason not to change.

Copper won't be done away with completely by 2025 - the old PSTN system will be turned off but there will still be customers supplied with broadband/VOIP services over ADSL/FTTC connections for a while yet.