Phone Companies "Landline Charges"

Shads51

My understanding is that the copper cable landlines are being discontinued and replaced with VOIP, which is through the Broadband System.

I am with Virgin Media and have now been moved by them to VOIP, I had no choice with this, I was told I had to change

Now that I am using VOIP via my broadband, should I still be paying Landline rental charges?

So now that I am paying for the VOIP via my Broadband, I should not be paying a separate Landline cost, as VOIP it is now part of my broadband charge.

Thanks for everyone's help

littleboo

You have broadband, and  in addition you have  phone service, so yes, there is a charge for the phone service. 

iniltous

Virgin are an interesting case , long before anyone else , they had standalone broadband, you didn’t have a phone service unless you wanted one , there wasn’t a massive difference in price , when I had Virgin , it was something like £30 broadband or broadband and phone £35 , with some offers it was occasionally cheaper to take both ….it actually was a separate service, the phone over a copper pair and broadband over a coaxial cable , that why they could separate the services.

Now they do VoIP , so the copper pair is probably no longer needed , telephony over coaxial or the FTTP , via VoIP, but it’s not unreasonable to expect to pay more for 2  services compared to only taking 1 , even if the copper pair isn’t needed ….calling it line rental , when it’s telephony being provided only confuses the issue .
If today stand-alone VM  broadband ( cable or FTTP ) is £35 then if you add telephony paying an extra £2-5 seems reasonable to me , even if it’s delivered over the same ‘line’ as the broadband.

It seems a strange argument to me , previously when people had no choice to take telephony to get broadband, there were complaints that those who don’t want telephony had to pay for it , the argument now seems to be that VoIP should be included for free because it uses broadband , but you are back to those that don’t want VoIP would argue they are paying for a service they don’t want ….basically there has to be two prices , broadband, and broadband and phone , obviously 2 things cost more than 1 thing .

southsidergs

It's called LINE rental not landline, no idea why people get the idea of it not being needed