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Thread: Home Broadband without a landline, again..

  1. #1

    Home Broadband without a landline, again..

    Having done a bit of research into home broadband without the facility to make outgoing calls, as BT said they were unable to offer such a service, I agreed to a package with Vodafone who were helpful and set about taking over the line. BT e mailed to say they were sorry to see me go and that btinternet e mails would cease to function and one or two other facilities would be lost. So, a quick call to BT to find out what other consequences might arise, put me in touch with an employee who pointed out many failings in the Vodafone operation, most of which I said I was happy to accept, especially as they would charge me half of what BT were. I explained I didn't need the facility of making calls and resented having to pay for that anyway. Before long BT had come up with a package which was just about the same as the Vodafone proposition , they seem effectively to have removed the cost of the land line bit and I am happy with that. So, worth asking the question if you are in a similar position, saves me about £24 a month. ....

  2. #2
    Master lordloz's Avatar
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    Great thanks for that I'm thinking of doing same so thats really useful ta

    Sent from my SM-G920F using TZ-UK mobile app

  3. #3
    Grand Master Onelasttime's Avatar
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    Always drives me mad seeing that £19 rental charge every month when we never, ever use the home phone.

    Not sure that Virgin would be so accommodating if i ask them to stick their landline rental.

  4. #4
    Master mindforge's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Onelasttime View Post
    Always drives me mad seeing that £19 rental charge every month when we never, ever use the home phone.

    Not sure that Virgin would be so accommodating if i ask them to stick their landline rental.
    I have a Virgin Business fibre only subscription, no line rental. It's just to the house but you get good speeds as it's a residential area so not many businesses using it.

  5. #5
    Grand Master Onelasttime's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mindforge View Post
    I have a Virgin Business fibre only subscription, no line rental. It's just to the house but you get good speeds as it's a residential area so not many businesses using it.
    The problem is, I use Virgin TV as well so it works out cheaper paying the £19 than if I cancelled and started a new BB-only package and got the TV elsewhere.

    Like car insurance, they've got you by the short and curlies.

  6. #6
    Master mindforge's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Onelasttime View Post
    The problem is, I use Virgin TV as well so it works out cheaper paying the £19 than if I cancelled and started a new BB-only package and got the TV elsewhere.

    Like car insurance, they've got you by the short and curlies.
    Ah. Well I suppose you just look at the total price then, including the needless line rental charge.

  7. #7
    Master
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    And when you need an ambulance and the mobile network is down?

  8. #8
    Master pinpull's Avatar
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    Home Broadband without a landline, again..

    I’ve just binned BT and gone to Vodaphone, with no problem and a guarantee of no price increases for the duration of the contract.

    Fed up with taking out a BT contract for a fixed period at a price, then having to put up with 4 or 5 price rises during that period - I really don’t need my ‘cloud storage’ increased, which is apparently one of the benefits I would enjoy for the extra money!

    Also, the BT hotspots seem to be more and more difficult to log on to, so another facility lost.

    BT refused to offer me a deal to stay with them. They told me the contract was ending soon but didn’t tell me when, invited me to contact them for a special deal they had for me - which wasn’t one!

    Haven’t had a landline for 20 years and haven’t missed it. I’m now paying less than half of the BT cost, avoiding yet another price rise next month, and getting a rebate for the final month’s charge as charges were paid in advance.

    I’m happy...

    Edit: When I say I haven’t had a landline, I meant I haven’t had a landline telephone. The Vodaphone (and BT) connections do include a landline if you choose to use it


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    Last edited by pinpull; 13th August 2018 at 18:37.

  9. #9

    No landline

    Quote Originally Posted by mindforge View Post
    I have a Virgin Business fibre only subscription, no line rental. It's just to the house but you get good speeds as it's a residential area so not many businesses using it.
    I have Virgin TV plus Virgin broadband I asked them to instal a phone line but was told they couldn’t as there was not enough demand in my road and no transformer in the virgin box and do you what I do not miss having a home phone line our mobiles are adequate.

  10. #10
    Master Skier's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jeremy67 View Post
    And when you need an ambulance and the mobile network is down?
    How frequently have you needed to phone an ambulance or any other of the emergency services? How often has your mobile network been down? How often have the two been coincident? And what if your landline was down?

    I ditched my BT landline (that used to go down periodically - not frequently but every now and again) and now get my broadband internet via the EE 4G network. There has been no downtime in over 6 months aside from two pre-planned short power interruptions.

  11. #11
    Craftsman
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    I'm really interested in this, especially as I've just seen Vodafone's current offer of £200 worth of tech (my choice a Sonos One), you mention that they told you about Vodafone's failings, what are they?

  12. #12
    Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by Onelasttime View Post
    Always drives me mad seeing that £19 rental charge every month when we never, ever use the home phone.

    Not sure that Virgin would be so accommodating if i ask them to stick their landline rental.
    Isn't the point that whether you use your land line phone or not, your broadband uses it. Hence the line rental, and having to plug your router into the land line.

  13. #13
    Master Skier's Avatar
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    Aside from businesses (many of whom use VOIP) who actually uses a landline for calls these days? Why would you when for far less you can make calls within a package from a mobile that you always have with you. I accept there will be niche areas (remote rural areas where there's no mobile signal etc.) but BT recognises that call revenue will not form a major part of its future revenue stream and so have hiked the rental charge on the back of most people needing a landline for Broadband. With 5G and in the future 6, 7 & 8G etc. the need for a landline will disappear for most. Where BT has not implemented FTTC at a minimum and FTTP in rural areas where distances from cabinets make FTTC irrelevant, people will move away from landlines altogether especially as the generation that has grown up with mobiles as part of their lives become the majority of homeowners. BT recognises this hence its purchase of EE.

    As more mobile networks offer large/unlimited data packages at ever more competitive prices the tipping point will come.

  14. #14
    Grand Master Mr Curta's Avatar
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    We've had the same UK Skype number for years, it has been very useful whilst living in four different countries as we can give what appears to be a UK landline number to friends and family, and when registering with online companies. It also confuses the hell out of the in-laws, which is an added bonus. All we have to do is make sure that our smartphones are logged onto our Skype account and they will ring when the number is dialled.

    I contacted Zen Internet this week regarding getting a fibre broadband internet connection up and running in our UK home. The very helpful gentleman I was talking to advised me that our landline had been disconnected and it would cost well over £100 for BT to reconnect it but the incoming fibre could be switched on and configured remotely by Zen with no line rental required. With the Skype number working so well (even if the broadband goes down it works on a data connection) we've decided not to bother with a landline.

  15. #15
    Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by Skier View Post
    Aside from businesses (many of whom use VOIP) who actually uses a landline for calls these days? Why would you when for far less you can make calls within a package from a mobile that you always have with you. I accept there will be niche areas (remote rural areas where there's no mobile signal etc.) but BT recognises that call revenue will not form a major part of its future revenue stream and so have hiked the rental charge on the back of most people needing a landline for Broadband. With 5G and in the future 6, 7 & 8G etc. the need for a landline will disappear for most. Where BT has not implemented FTTC at a minimum and FTTP in rural areas where distances from cabinets make FTTC irrelevant, people will move away from landlines altogether especially as the generation that has grown up with mobiles as part of their lives become the majority of homeowners. BT recognises this hence its purchase of EE.

    As more mobile networks offer large/unlimited data packages at ever more competitive prices the tipping point will come.
    Me (us - including SWMBO). Never use a mobile. A number of reasons. 1. They don't work in our house. 2. I spend all day long on the receiving end of crappy quality mobile calls... it nice to actually partake of a normal land-line to land-line call. I've noticed people that use mobile calls all the time have become used to a poor quality call... they accept that's what calls are like. In fact there's a new generation out there that have probably never used a proper phone and have absolutely no idea what a good quality call sounds like! The number of times I have to slam the phone down because it's simply impossible to understand what the heck the caller is saying. What annoys me more is people calling in on a rubbish mobile call and they admit there's a perfectly good land line phone sat on the desk next to them!

    As to data over mobile. Well that's okay if you only want to use it on your phone for checking emails/social media/poor quality audio/video, but I use broadband on a couple of laptops, TV and HiFi, IP Camera, etc. Doing that lot on a mobile network wouldn't be impossible but would be a lot harder to sort out and a lot more expensive and, tbh, not as fast. btw I pay £35 a month for unlimited data (I go through over 200gig a month), 60 meg speed, calls and a fixed IP on our land line... I think you would struggle to beat that on a mobile contract.

  16. #16
    Master Skier's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by solwisesteve View Post
    Me (us - including SWMBO). Never use a mobile. A number of reasons. 1. They don't work in our house. 2. I spend all day long on the receiving end of crappy quality mobile calls... it nice to actually partake of a normal land-line to land-line call. I've noticed people that use mobile calls all the time have become used to a poor quality call... they accept that's what calls are like. In fact there's a new generation out there that have probably never used a proper phone and have absolutely no idea what a good quality call sounds like! The number of times I have to slam the phone down because it's simply impossible to understand what the heck the caller is saying. What annoys me more is people calling in on a rubbish mobile call and they admit there's a perfectly good land line phone sat on the desk next to them!

    As to data over mobile. Well that's okay if you only want to use it on your phone for checking emails/social media/poor quality audio/video, but I use broadband on a couple of laptops, TV and HiFi, IP Camera, etc. Doing that lot on a mobile network wouldn't be impossible but would be a lot harder to sort out and a lot more expensive and, tbh, not as fast. btw I pay £35 a month for unlimited data (I go through over 200gig a month), 60 meg speed, calls and a fixed IP on our land line... I think you would struggle to beat that on a mobile contract.
    Well, without wishing to hijack this thread too much, I did mention that those with poor mobile reception at home may want to keep a landline. I live in rural Gloucestershire and BT refuses to connect the three properties along the lane I live on to FTTP so we've all ditched BT and will never go back (the irony being that BT owns EE). I don't know what you mean about a poor quality mobile call as I just don't experience this. Yes, I do get the odd dropout when driving in remote areas or background noise if someone is outside in the wind but that's not the quality of the mobile phone/signal. My EE package is 200GB per month for £60. This is for home Broadband i.e. to a 4G modem attached to the Netgear Orbi mesh WiFi in exactly the same way a landline would provide broadband. Some devices (main PC, NAS, TV etc.) are then connected using Ethernet via Powerline adapters. The EE 4G solution gives me speeds as follows:

    Download: 70Mbps
    Upload: 40Mbps

    Previously when with BT I got 6.5/0.7Mbps and that was after the local exchange and cabinets were upgraded to FTTC. I will get Gigaclear FTTP at some point and will go with that but my main point was that it won't be long before traditional landlines (certainly copper and more often than not aluminium) will be largely redundant for anything other than the internet and as the mobile network develops and companies offer larger data allowances people will move to this solution.

  17. #17
    Master
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    I posted in the sky thread that BT are now adopting the "sky model" of pricing and customer retention.

    I was looking to cancel with BT and spoke to someone who explained they have a new retentions team who have access to better deals for longstanding customers. My broadband and line rental was running at £49.99 per month with BT looking to increase it to £53 in September.

    I ended up being offered a new 18 month contract at £27.99 fixed for 18 months with free weekend anytime calls.

    It really is a pain having to seemingly go through a cancellations process with all suppliers to get the best deal, but most seem to be happy to exploit those that aren't proactive in checking for deals every year.

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