Swap to any fibre and keep old BT number?

Roger-D

Researching on behalf of my elderly mother.
She currently has a VERY slow BT line with Broadband provided by Talktalk. When I say slow, I mean 1.5Mbps on occasion.

Fibre has been installed in the street and her neighbours have taken to it.

We want to upgrade her BB to the fibre but she is adamant that she wants to keep her existing phone number. She's been there for ~60yrs.

I know we can do this if we go with BT but do you know if it is possible with any other BB provider? Or, is our only option to have a separate BB fibre provider whilst keeping the existing BT line? Obvs this almost doubles the cost.

Thanks in advance.

iniltous

Are you sure your mother pays BT and TT separately ?
Many people still refer to a ‘BT line ‘ when BT have nothing to do with that persons supply, although common years ago , someone paying BT for calls and line rental and another company ( like Talk Talk ) separately for broadband is rare , it’s a legacy product that isn’t sold anymore and companies like Talk Talk made strenuous efforts to get their broadband customers to also take ‘line rental’ from them as well as broadband, is it  possible your mother was moved to TT for everything not just broadband ?

If she is genuinely one of the few on this legacySMPF , shared metallic path facility arrangement, then it depends on the FTTP provider what options are available,
If its  Openreach  FTTP , they could move line rental to TT or move broadband to BT and upgrade to FTTP at the same time , if  it’s an alternative network like City Fibre they would have to join a company that uses them and hope that they can port the phone number from BT , but that would be entirely down to this new company, if it failed it would not be BT failure but the company your mother chose to use .
As you say the safe option is to keep the phone service as it is ( with whoever provides it ) and get a separate broadband service on FTTP , but that’s the expensive option, although if TT are billed separately then obviously some saving would be made by not having TT broadband on the existing BT phone line .

slackgarry

If she has a recent android phone you could get a VoIP app and have the Landline number (Ported) redirected to her mobile phone only a few quid a month. Thus saving on a land line. See what you both think.

littleboo

Does she need faster broadband? Do a she need broadband at all?

Roger-D

littleboo said:

Does she need faster broadband? Do a she need broadband at all?

Good question. She certainly doesn't need 'fast' broadband but definitely something that works. She has email quite a bit and, now that she's recently on her own, I suspect she may look into streaming more with TV catch-up etc.

Roger-D

iniltous said:

Are you sure your mother pays BT and TT separately ?
Many people still refer to a ‘BT line ‘ when BT have nothing to do with that persons supply, although common years ago , someone paying BT for calls and line rental and another company ( like Talk Talk ) separately for broadband is rare , it’s a legacy product that isn’t sold anymore and companies like Talk Talk made strenuous efforts to get their broadband customers to also take ‘line rental’ from them as well as broadband, is it  possible your mother was moved to TT for everything not just broadband ?

If she is genuinely one of the few on this legacySMPF , shared metallic path facility arrangement, then it depends on the FTTP provider what options are available,
If its  Openreach  FTTP , they could move line rental to TT or move broadband to BT and upgrade to FTTP at the same time , if  it’s an alternative network like City Fibre they would have to join a company that uses them and hope that they can port the phone number from BT , but that would be entirely down to this new company, if it failed it would not be BT failure but the company your mother chose to use .
As you say the safe option is to keep the phone service as it is ( with whoever provides it ) and get a separate broadband service on FTTP , but that’s the expensive option, although if TT are billed separately then obviously some saving would be made by not having TT broadband on the existing BT phone line .

I'm not sure now, now that you mention it. I will speak to her and try and find out exactly what she has.
Thanks for all the other info as well.

Andrea15

I'll piggyback on this thread.
Fibre has literally just arrived to my street and now it seems that if I switch provider, which I am about to do, you lose the landline number (or the landline altogether). If on the one hand I don't remember the last time I have made or received a phone call, I am still miffed...
I am currently with Vodafone and was thinking to switch to Shell (speed 48-66).
Is that the price we have to pay for better broadband, or either or both of these suppliers are being awkward?

Shell chat guy just said that

"Well number retention is generally possible, but usually depends on the previous provider. Sometimes it'll not go through during the initial takeover process but we are able to request it again after the service is live."

colalba

I don't know if different providers operate differently but I have just moved from old style copper line/broadband with Plusnet to new Fibre with Vodafone and automatically kept my old landline number which was working immediately the new line was activated.

The big difference is  the phone needs to be plugged directly into the router not the Openreach telephone box.

ps I wouldn't recommend Vodafone but for reason of  bad admin not the number porting.

Andrea15

colalba said:

I don't know if different providers operate differently but I have just moved from old style copper line/broadband with Plusnet to new Fibre with Vodafone and automatically kept my old landline number which was working immediately the new line was activated.

The big difference is  the phone needs to be plugged directly into the router not the Openreach telephone box.

ps I wouldn't recommend Vodafone but for reason of  bad admin not the number porting.

It depends what they mean with "fibre". I had a "fibre" before too, but now the wires in my area have been replaced, so now I have a *real* "fibre. 

jbuchanangb

My records tell me that in September 2007 I changed from paying BT for line rental & call charges while paying Tiscali for ADSL Broadband, over to paying Tiscali for Line rental, call charges and ADSL broadband. I have still got the letter from Tiscali "Welcome to Tiscali Line Rental"! I did not lose my phone number.

Later in 2012 I upgraded to VDSL FTTC. It is possible that your mother is in the state that I was in until 2007. I didn't know it was called shared metallic path facility arrangement (SMPF). In which case the first move might be to see whether TalkTalk will take over the Line rental from BT while retaining the phone number. They might insist at the same time on upgrading to VDSL FTTC.

Roger-D

Update:
We've gone with BT fibre. The all-in 150Mbps broadband & unlimited calls comes in at almost half the price of the current line rental with calls plus, the rubbish broadband. A no-brainer really.