VoIP Providers for home "landline"

Hi Folks - hope someone can explain this to me in terms a 5 year old could understand.

I'm currently with PlusNet for Landline and Broadband and they've just sent me an appointment to have my connection converted to fibre from the old copper wires.

Looking into this more closely, and it appears that PlusNet are getting out of the Voice side of service provision - so, my question is - who the hell can I go to to get a normal landline phone, and, perhaps more importantly, can I keep my existing phone number - because - well - basically, everyone I know uses that to contact me - while I "do" have a mobile phone, its always been one issued from work, and not to be used for personal things - so - stuff like Doctors, Dentists, Hospital Appointments as well as all my relatives and friends - Along with it being the phone no. I ran a business from for 20 years, and where I still get the occasional (and often rather lucrative) odd job come in...

It's not somewhere I make many calls from, if I'm honest - I'm more concerned about people being able to get hold of me - primarily because I simply CAN'T give them the works mobile number or I'll be on a disciplinary in weeks...

So - i'm looking for a cheap as possible service, minimal - only 1 line,1 number - and of course, I'm guessing that I'll need different hardware for the actual phones (or maybe there's some form of VOIP to POTS adaptor box ?? - honestly, i dunno - I can't remember exactly when I went from being IT savvy to being a complete luddite, I think it was around my 50th birthday )

with that - all it remains to say is "HELP"!!!

Phonely & Dial9 are two possible options to check (I have no experience of them).

You can stay with BT but it still uses VOIP but you shouldn't see any difference as they now have some gubbins that means you just keep your normal phone. My Dad was switched over last year and just has his normal phone plugged in just the same. He doesn't have any internet service.

You should ask Plusnet about what happens as you need to keep the same number and same phone equipment so you expect to be able to do that. They need to clarify the process properly.

I use VOIP via Andrews and Arnold. They can do transfers of your existing landline number Their routers also support VOIP so you can just plug your normal phone into it and carry on using it just the same but you have to set up the router to do it. A. & A are pretty good though so if you go to them they should sort out the whole thing before you get it so you just plug it in and it works. They aren't cheap like plusnet though.

Many years ago, I used to use Sipgate, and always had a Plymouth number

When I was contacted last year by Plusnet, I was told that if I wanted to keep my landline phone number my account would be migrated over to EE. That would be using an IP phone with the same landline number.

I was expecting them to remove the pole to house copper & install the fibre as replacement. This didn’t happen, as I now have the old copper & new fibre going from pole to house. It seems to me they’re unwilling to dispense with the copper ‘just in case’!

My current landline & BB package is also with PlusNet and I will face a similar dilemma come May this year when my current contract runs out....even though analogue voice is not due cease until sometime in 2027. I wonder if PN will allow me, at a good price, to keep my landline & BB with into 2027 ???

The wisdom coming out of PN Towers is to switch to EE for both 'Landline' and BB as it will be under one roof so to speak making life easier in case of line problems ! FWIW originally we had our phone line with BT and as PN offered to match the BT phone package to add to our BB it saved us money. So we are well used to having 2 service sources.

At this time, when we are forced away from PN for the landline, my first inclination is see what BT can offer?

However, if push comes to shove, provided I can still use my BT Business Smart Hub 5 (used for a while as I hated the poor configurability of the PN router) I will look at EE........ especially so, as for email PN have migrated me to Greenby.

IMO it is a great shame that PN are being reduced to just a BB supplier...........bearing in mind that BT own both EE and PN, I wonder what will happen to PN in the medium to longer term

Edit ~ we are on an FTTC connection and the cabinet is approx 500m away by footpath/road. There are no plans to create FTTP on our estate, so I surmise that whatever they "do" it will provisioned using FTTC connections

We are with Sky Fibre and kept our landline during the switch from Plusnet

I'm with Sky Fibre too, and plugged my landline phone into the Sky router and it now works as voip. Admittedly it was a new number but it was a house move to NI.
Essentially, you can use VOIP over any broadband connection. It's just a matter of the phone number I guess, but the provider should be capable of dealing with that.

I use Voinage for my VOIP line, been with them a year (previously with VM for broadband and Phone, switched to toob for broadband).
Was able to transfer my old number (and area code) to Voinage (I had the option of a new number as well).
Had one glitch where the phones failed to ring for an incoming call, which I spotted when I receive an email from Voinage to say I had a voicemail, just needed the VOIP box rebooting to fix.
I do have the option to redirect incoming calls to my mobile (or any other number), but not tried that.
I can also set up a blacklist to block incoming numbers (so any scam callers get blocked).

We were moved to VoIP a couple of years ago, no issues. However the vast majority of our calls are over the mobiles.

As Plusnet will not provide VoIP, in your situation I expect they will recommend a change to ee.

Perhaps it is time to search for a new BB provider, one that also provides VoIP.

The problem you get with the new IP service is that if you have a power cut, you lose your phone, not just Internet...... It happened to me 3 times, so we did away with the phone and only use mobiles now. I get 5G indoors, so it's not a problem.

Jelster said:

The problem you get with the new IP service is that if you have a power cut, you lose your phone, not just Internet...... It happened to me 3 times, so we did away with the phone and only use mobiles now. I get 5G indoors, so it's not a problem.

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Our router can run of 12V, so we don't lose it if the house power goes out.
If there is a wide spread cut, the cell towers will also go down (some have batteries that will last a while, but many 5G don't)
In the event of an EMP, nothing will work.

I have thought from the e beginning that digital voice has that key flaw in the event of a power outage.

Though I haven't got any yet, UPS units are needed to power the router and the VoIP box (if they are separate units. Now AFAIK they are relatively low power demand so the UPS needs to be capable of minimum 48 hours backup to make sure at the very least phone Comms are maintained.

Box Brownie said:

I have thought from the e beginning that digital voice has that key flaw in the event of a power outage.

Though I haven't got any yet, UPS units are needed to power the router and the VoIP box (if they are separate units. Now AFAIK they are relatively low power demand so the UPS needs to be capable of minimum 48 hours backup to make sure at the very least phone Comms are maintained.

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Usually, just a 12V battery is needed, very few devices need more that 12V now.
That will work as long as everything between you and the backbone has a backup supply.

Sangoma said:

In the event of an EMP, nothing will work.

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In the event of EMP, then you won't need a phone, there won't be anyone to call.....

Went through a similar crap few years ago (in Thailand though, not UK) when a local state-enterprise provider changed a local exchange to a VoIP one.

The main difference in my situation was the dial tone just gone out without notice (I did say "crap", didn't I), and I found out the hard way that my home phones didn't ring up when I called it on my mobile, despite that I still heard the ringback on my mobile normally as if the phone still worked but no one picked it up.

My house's phone was broken for like, nearly 2 weeks; until I eventually got around to contact the provider about it. While I was already using fiber Internet from the same provider, I insisted that I don't want a single point of failure in combined 'net+phone-on-single-fiber-line setup (0); so they hauled up a separate second fiber line to connect my home to a different dedicated "phone only" exchange, and they installed a separate... "box" (more on that later) that converted the fiber to the plain old telephone line my home phones could connect to.

They claimed that this dedicated network (and how my "box" was setup from their side) would accommodate fax calls or modem/BBS calls fine; but I haven't got a chance to test this claim yet.

Anyway...

TheBigYin said:

or maybe there's some form of VOIP to POTS adaptor box

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Like @srichards, said. It's called Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA (1)); which is a small box that will do the VoIP part for your already-existing phone. It will have these ports on its back:

• One DC power jack, which you plug a wall wart coming with it to.
• One phone jack that you gotta connect your entire-house's phone line to.
• Either one LAN port that you gotta connect to your Internet router, or one optic port that connects to the fiber line to your telco.

There are few variants of this little thing; but before even thinking about that, you need to pay special attention to what @g4aaw mentioned:

g4aaw said:

When I was contacted last year by Plusnet, I was told that if I wanted to keep my landline phone number my account would be migrated over to EE. That would be using an IP phone with the same landline number.

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Assuming that you wouldn't like to change to a completely-different provider, PlusNet actually have a help page saying what to do in this case:


(TLDR: call 0330-1239-123, and ask to get changed from BT-PlusNet to BT-EE. Since they're both under the same owner, you're likely able to keep using the old phone number; but I don't know if there would be some migration/setup fee or package/rate change or not, so you would have to ask)

As the help page said, you will be given a new Internet router, that happens to have both fiber optic port and phone jack in the back. You would now connect this phone jack to your phones rather than connecting that to a line going out of the house.

If you have more than one phone in the house connecting to the same phone line, then there might be an extra work to do in an unusual case that your ADSL router wasn't installed correctly. (2) So, make sure to also ask them whether their installation technician would be "rewiring the home phone line" for you or not as well, just in case.

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(0) I see landline phone as an infrastructure more critical than Internet. Needless to say that I wasn't 100% happy with the phone that goes out instantly on power outage (the "box" in my case, runs on 12V and I could theoretically connect a battery to that, but it is now my responsibility to find equipment to do so), and have dial-tone availability that's comparable to 99.5% rather than 99.99% it used to be. However, I don't like relying solely on mobile phone, so I stayed despite this.

^ I think if you migrated to BT-EE, your situation might be a bit better than mine, since they seemingly offer backup battery add-on for their phone-router. The battery doesn't last long though.

(1) Not to be confused with an old-school ribbon-cable hard disk interface.

(2) If your original ADSL installation was correct, all your home phones would currently be connected on a single phone line which goes into a jack labeled "Phone" behind your ADSL router. In such case, when you new (ATA-hybrid) router comes, it's as easy as you (or the technician) simply connecting this jack to that new router, and your hone phones would work again.

^ Ignore the phone line that previously go into the "Line" jack on your old ADSL router; it would be no longer usable once the switchover was complete.

/\ they can pull the fibre through the same conduit as your copper cable (in some cases)

We use whatsapp a lot.

I'm with youfiber, I was able to keep my number and equipment. The "old" phone just plugs in to the new router.


As for leaving the old copper wire up I assume this is because it's not their property and belongs to openreach.