Phasing out home phones

[#1]

I checked out the broadband suppliers for my area and PN were around the same price. However, BT for the exact same service was £10 a month more than PN. Stayed with PN as they have proided excellent and fast  service when I had a problem.

As stated in previous post just moved my landline number (easily) to A&A with no hiccups. We also have no mobile signal and use 1Pmobile, which has wifi calling. Assuming you don' live on your mobile or voip phone if you do the maths it is very inexpensive. I still have maybe £20 of my £30 a year 1Pmobile after 9 months. A&A will be the same. My wifes 1Pmobile tends to need an occasional top up as she speaks to her mother for 1/2 an hour a time.

At the end of the day the landlines are going to go and so it has to be easier to sort it out now before everyone has to go voip....and it is not difficult.

[#2]

 @hirot36 I read your earlier posts with interest, though it appears you were contracted with PN for both phone and broadband? I'm not so it's probably not quite as easy, though I already have a working A&A service too.

The simplest process for me would actually seem to be to install a second line, broadband-only, which would be FTTC. That seems to be an option with PN and not too expensive apart from installation fees.

Then transfer my landline number to A&A which should cancel both my existing landline and PN ADSL, both of which are "out of contract".

[#3]

@HPsauce I read your earlier posts with interest, though it appears you were contracted with PN for both phone and broadband? I'm not so it's probably not quite as easy, though I already have a working A&A service too.

You OUGHT to be able to do the same. When you upgrade to SoGEA with Plusnet, they will place a 'change of ownership, cease' on your landline to complete on the date of the SoGEA upgrade. This effectively transfers your WLR line to Plusnet and immediately ceases it. So your BT account will be cancelled. You then have 30 days to port the ceased number. Yes, there is a slight chance of the port failing due to the number being 'non-active' but A & A seem to be able to handle that.

In @hirot36 s case the port was started before the upgrade, I wouldn't risk that in your case, since if BT retail get the port request before the upgrade date they might request an immediate cease which will cease your broadband and cancel the upgrade. I suspect in @hirot36 s case the port request didnt actually get confirmed until after the upgrade date.

[#4]

Have read a bit the last couple of days and still undecided on this. Seems I will need an adapter and a new phone (my current phone is from 2006!). I would, however, prefer to have one service for all so I may end up going elsewhere (Sky is about the same price) and at least then I should only need a new phone and not an adapter (being on a limited budget means I have to keep costs down)...luckily I have 7 months to decide and have already starter migrating my emails away from my PN email address

[#5]

I should only need a new phone

If you go with Sky, your old phone will just plug into the back of the new Sky router, as long as it's got a BT plug on it.

[#6]

Thanks @MisterW "You OUGHT to be able to do the same. When you upgrade to SoGEA with Plusnet, they will place a 'change of ownership, cease' on your landline to complete on the date of the SoGEA upgrade. This effectively transfers your WLR line to Plusnet and immediately ceases it. So your BT account will be cancelled. You then have 30 days to port the ceased number."

I'm a belt and braces guy and REALLY don't want to lose my number. Scouting around there's a good 18-month deal from Virgin at the moment which would literally halve my monthly costs and give me six times the speed (not that I need it!).

I'm very tempted to go for that as we have cable outside then migrate my landline number to A&A once it's working. Then in 18 months time see what's available in my area and migrate my broadband if Virgin won't do another deal!

[#7]

@HPsauce I'm a belt and braces guy and REALLY don't want to lose my number

I can appreciate that.

Scouting around there's a good 18-month deal from Virgin at the moment which would literally halve my monthly costs and give me six times the speed (not that I need it!).

I'm very tempted to go for that as we have cable outside then migrate my landline number to A&A once it's working.

One of my colleagues did just that not long ago. He had broadband & phone with PN. In your case porting the number will cease the BT account and should cease the PN broadband as well. Worst case scenario would be that you MIGHT have to manually cancel the PN account. 

As long as you dont use PN email , webspace or have referrals you want to keep, then its a no risk strategy.

[#8]

With the stop sell order does this mean you cannot move your service to another provider, or even change your existing one at the end of contract??  Other than to a FTTP provider. I wonder what this project is called I would like to make a point to watch the mini series I'm sure there will be one......Len.....

[#9]

Yes you are correct. I almost got the A&A bit done first but it was pointed out to me on this forum that I would loose the number. So, I spoke witb A&A who agreed that I change to the new contract, get an cross over date and then buy the voip service 2 days before contract change over. My original PN contract had 5 months to run but changing contract was free and saved me £3 a month which covered the A&A cost.
An advantage of the A&A service is that if anyone calls and leaves a message it gets pinged straight to my mobile and includes the callers phone number.
Although it is all seemless it is a great shame that the old and reliable service is going. It certainly isn't progressc and having watched an Openreach fibre and cabinet instalation I can only hope they don't have to replace/repair any fibres as the flimsy racking will crack quiet easily.

[#10]

@MixerBIscuit 

Not at all. What it means is that you can't change your current service AND keep you analogue PSTN telephone service. It has to be either lost or transferred to a digital phone service.

Unless you are in a FTTP priority area you can move to another FTTC provider if you wish.

[#11]

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@HPsauce wrote:

The simplest process for me would actually seem to be to install a second line, broadband-only, which would be FTTC. That seems to be an option with PN and not too expensive apart from installation fees.

Then transfer my landline number to A&A which should cancel both my existing landline and PN ADSL

.

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@HPsauce wrote:

I'm a belt and braces guy and REALLY don't want to lose my number

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@HPsauce 

Rather than installing a second line, which would involve drilling your house to fit another Master Socket, juggling multiple accounts, and still risk Openreach or Plusnet screwing up your existing setup, and running two routers for a while.

Have you considered asking A&A to simultaneously import your BT landline (to A&A VoIP) and your Plusnet broadband (to Home::1 VDSL), to one of their short duration contracts (1 month, or 6 month) ?. A&A are extremely careful to co-ordinate the order in which each step of the transfer process is done (so they don't lose either service) and ensure you have minimum downtime.

Doing this would be very safe (unlikely to lose your phone number), there would be no need for a second line or alterations to your home, you would eliminate the possibility of errors due to the general incompetence of BT or Plusnet ordering/provisioning systems, AND if you still wanted to move your SoGEA to a cheaper service in future then it would be simple to migrate just the broadband away from A&A after the initial 1 or 6 month initial term contract.

The seems to me less effort and less risky than your proposed "simplest process"

[#12]

@Anonymous Good thinking there, though I've thought of that already and for various reasons it's not that attractive.

Our current phone line isn't actually ideally terminated, not least because the old (1960s) wiring was partly buried during a later house extension and is in poor condition. The overhead drop wire was replaced a few years ago and a huge length of very old cable left in place and in use as a result.

A new line and master socket is actually worth doing and running two routers briefly isn't a problem, though SWMBO might complain that it's untidy!

Several of my neighbours have/had multiple lines/cables and BT seem to cope with that.

As I mentioned above Virgin is also an option for a second line, but routing their cable underground isn't quite as easy as an overhead BT one.

[#13]

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@HPsauce wrote:

The overhead drop wire was replaced a few years ago and a huge length of very old cable left in place and in use as a result.

A new line and master socket is actually worth doing

@HPsauce 

I accept what you are saying BUT you are assuming that Openreach will install an additional drop wire !

Your existing drop wire will have at least two phone line twisted wire pairs, so assuming your current Master Socket uses the red+green pair,  then an Openreach installer is VERY LIKELY just going to fit an adjacent second Master Socket and wire it with the spare yellow+black pair extended from the original cable.

I don't know that it possible to specify in advance, for an additional drop wire to be installed - when an existing spare pair already enters your home !

I have a single drop cable from a nearby telegraph pole, and have an NTE MK3 on one side of the house, and then some distance away in a different room an old hardwired phone going in to a "PO TEL" screw terminal block - using the second drop wire pair.

[#14]

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@HPsauce wrote:

I picked a random spare DECT handset, de-registered it from the relevant base and registered it to the N300; only problem was finding where in the menus to do that! (Settings, Management, Miscellaneous).

@HPsauce 

I've always registered my handsets by holding the blue button for 3 seconds

Here is the  Gigaset N300IP handbook pdf  if you need it

[#15]

Thanks @Anonymous I have the N300ip manuals already. 😎

My drop wire may well have 4 cores in which case hopefully they can reuse it to my eaves where it joins the very very old (sixties!) cabling down to my master socket. That is: 1. largely buried 2. DEFINITELY only 2-core.

I'm happy for them to use a spare pair in the relatively recent drop wire. Then just run a cable down to the additional master socket. There's a spot I have in mind quite close to the current one.

I'll drill my own hole through the wall in preparation! 🤣