Is it time to ditch the landline?

..... which isn't all that good. 

I struggled after the UK providers failed to pick up, and in some cases quietly dropped UMA. I now have an O2 business account with a boost box. No problems but WiFi calling would be so much nicer for its elegance and lack of hardware needed. 

I recently bought an Infinity package and included the land line because, well, you just do. In retrospect, I don't really need a land line number. All I get is junk calls. All my friends, colleagues, businesses I routinely deal with never use it. When my fixed term expires I'm off. It's essentially paying for nothing.

We are a long way off community wireless & for the foreseeable we will all need a wire or fibre to connect to t'internet.  And I don't think you can avoid a line fee of some sort even if its buried in the overall package.   I have effectively dropped the phone landline by not using it,   numbers of outgoing calls per month is down to single digits & I've changed my BT contract starting next month to not include their Unlimited Anytime Calls package,  the new deal will be the basic weekend only calls for 'free'.     Mrs Mike is by far the biggest communicator,  Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp & BT Mobile for sms & talking.  I also have BT Mobile which gives phone calls via the internet at home,  that said most of my communications are over e-mail & mostly to overseas peeps & organisations & if we really do need to talk then we use Skype.

In the vast majority of cases, if you want reasonable internet access then you need a landline, be that copper or optical, it's still a landline (even if it's cable TV it's still a landline).

Are there any other experiences with VOIP providers other than Vonage that I should consider?  We should be switching over to 1Gb (yes 1Gb in rural Lancashire) !  fibre to the home within the next couple of months and looking to ditch BT copper landline and Sky broadband.  

Dungassin posted:

tonym posted:

Foot tapper posted:

Indeed Chris, yet only the latest handsets seem able to handle wifi calling.  For example, the iphone 6 can't, which came as something of a surprise to us.

 

Best regards, FT

That's a surprise to me too FT! My iPhone 6 does wi-fi calling perfectly well.

Just checked my iPhone 6.  It doesn't do this, and the way to set it up as described on the Apple site doesn't exist in my phones settings..  I'm on O2.  So, I'll be keeping the landline.

O2 have the Tu app which allows wifi calls on iPhone 6. I have both so I know it works.

One thing that you appear to have missed with ditching your landline is the cost of people calling you, particularly from overseas.

if I call Australia from my landline, it's 2p per minute.

To call an Australian mobile, it's 12p per minute.

At home, many people in rural areas don't get a reliable 2G signal, let alone 3 or 4G.

We reasonably often have power cuts in the Cotswolds, during which internet stops.

So, for the above reasons, I'm not yet ready to ditch my landline 

blythe posted:

One thing that you appear to have missed with ditching your landline is the cost of people calling you, particularly from overseas.  if I call Australia from my landline, it's 2p per minute.   To call an Australian mobile, it's 12p per minute.

Very true,  I make & receive a lot of overseas calls,  some can be quite lengthy & whenever possible I use Skype to Skype,  its free but yer still need a landline.   

blythe posted:

One thing that you appear to have missed with ditching your landline is the cost of people calling you, particularly from overseas.

 

Not so , we gave it some serious thought before ditching the BT "landline"* ........

                   _{*for the pedants among us, I use the term "landline" to indicate the veteran BT phone line, as opposed to Virginmedia (or similar) "cable".}

Our parents are dead. We and the daughters all have mobiles; neither daughter has a "landline". Our primary method of family communication these days is WhatsApp & Skype.

Family & friends (especially those in the Cotswolds!) use email, and the occasional text (which normally says, "Read your d@mn email!"). Broadband is by Virgin cable.

We kept the landline going while my mother was alive, because for some reason she would never phone the mobiles despite (a) having a moby herself, and (b) me programming every family fixed & mobile number into her menu-driven BT phone!

So other than my mother, and the daughters using the landline to shout, "Mum, Dad, Somebody.....pick up the d@mn mobile!" via the squawk box, the overwhelming majority of calls we received on our "landline" were from people trying to sell me something or other (despite having signed up for the Preference service), and I don't worry about how much their calls cost them.

 Don't miss it a bit!

Suzy Wong posted:

the overwhelming majority of calls we received on our "landline" were from people trying to sell me something or other (despite having signed up for the Preference service), and I don't worry about how much their calls cost them.

 

Same here. I just don't see the point any more. Sure, I'll need a cable into the house for internet access. That's a given. The telephone facility is not needed now. Actually, it hasn't been for years. It's just my mental inertia that has allowed it to survive.