VOIP at home?

[Silly Car]

It looks like we’ll be able to switch to a Full Fibre (FTTP) broadband service once the current FTTC contract expires in a couple of months.

According to the blurb from Talk Talk, their full fibre packages come sans telephone line so we’ll either have to sign up to service for the two people who call us on the house phone, tell them it is 2023 and call our mobiles or look at VOIP assuming there are home user packages / devices / services these days.

Does anyone know of / recommend any options for VOIP?

Cheers

[weeksy]

WhatsApp

[Count Steer]

We have no old style phone line any more. You can get VOIP phones. How you get a number allocated for one I don't know. (Ours is BT so kept the old number when we went fully digital, I'd have expected TalkTalk to offer something similar).

[Mr Moofo]

I have Virgin Media fibre.
When it came to contract renewal time, I asked for a package with no phone line.
It was more expensive that with a phone line.
So we have a phone line - but don't use it.

Majority of calls are mobile - on free minutes, or international on WhatsApp

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

You can have pretty much any UK number with VOIP, you can have it with analogue lines as well, but getting BT to do it might take some effort.

Assuming it's a SIP phone, you just connect to a SIP provider via IP and their virtual telephone switch takes care of the routing to who you want to call, much the same as any other phone, you're just using IP as a transport rather than a pair of wires, anyone want to talk codecs?

[KungFooBob]

Dunno about domestic stuff, but for business Ring Central are pretty good. In fact one of BT's offerings is just Ring Central rebranded.

Don't get told you have to use any providers 'official' handsets, cheap Yealink ones work well with most VoIP services.

[Slenver]

Just switch on WiFi Calling on your phones and mobile a/c.

I had to switch away from GiffGaff a couple of years ago as they don't support it, but all the main primary carriers do. Meant I could ditch the pointless landline once and for all, despite living in the sticks with no signal.

[Screwdriver]

Vodafone broadband includes voip as part of their package (£22/month currently).

I just switched from ripoff BT, transferred my number to Vodafone and the voice quality is the same to my ears.

[v8-powered]

We've just signed up for a FTTP service to get away from our current lame FTTC provider, they offer us a VOIP service and that allows our current BT number to be ported over. Bit pointless though as we don't even have a phone plugged in to it, we all use WiFi calling via our mobiles.

[Horse]

You can have pretty much any UK number with VOIP, you can have it with analogue lines as well, but getting BT to do it might take some effort.

IIRC all analogue is being switched off in 2025.

So unlikely to take much effort with BT. In fact, we've just changed, retained our old number (and it is old, only 5 instead of 6), and it's cheaper. And, I think the phones we bought were £10 each.

And due to a few hours delay, we had a compensation refund too

[dern]

We use Vonage (https://www.vonageforhome.co.uk/plans/) which costs us about 15 quid a month for all calls. Piece of cake to install, you just plug the small box in to your internet and the phone in to the box. It's been completely reliable. They ported our number to their service.