Land line phones (are they a thing of the past?)

So how do you do it?

  • I always use a LL phone when at home

    Votes: 24 31.2%

  • I never use a LL phone when at home

    Votes: 17 22.1%

  • I'll use both

    Votes: 25 32.5%

  • I don't have a LL

    Votes: 5 6.5%

  • I don't have a mobile

    Votes: 7 9.1%

  • I don't care, I'm off down the pub

    Votes: 4 5.2%
  • Total voters
    77
jonbeeza said:
We still have one, and just thinking why! We certainly don't need it..
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Same here, especially as my ISP doesn't actually require a phone line to supply broadband.

They do offer discounts though that always seem to make it cheaper to just keep the line with the broadband ;).
 
Swissy said:
You sound like you work for BT,

Argue as much as you want, line rental imo is a rip off, I am being made to pay for a land line phone I don't use or want, if there was a way for people to get (cheap)internet access without having a land line 99% would take it and ditch BT
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I don't work for BT, nor do I work in the telecommunications industry at all, nor have I ever apart from a few months at Unitel (one of the original PCN licence holders) in the early 1990s. For some reason the fact that I've made the effort to understand the way the network and the market is structured makes people think I have a vested interest. I don't.

You aren't paying for "a land line phone", you are paying for a land line. Whether you use it for voice telephony, data, or both is your choice. You do not even have to pay the line rental to BT if you don't want to, but you will have to pay it to someone if you want it to be connected before you can use it for anything. Is this so difficult to understand? It shouldn't be, I managed to explain it to my 75 year old mother who knows nothing about telecommunications when she asked me the same question!
 
onomatopoeia said:
You aren't paying for "a land line phone", you are paying for a land line. Whether you use it for voice telephony, data, or both is your choice. You do not even have to pay the line rental to BT if you don't want to, but you will have to pay it to someone if you want it to be connected before you can use it for anything. Is this so difficult to understand? It shouldn't be, I managed to explain it to my 75 year old mother who knows nothing about telecommunications when she asked me the same question!
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As I understand it, and has been said a few times, in the past,
IF you use another provider for the LL, and there is a fault,
BT have to repair that fault. not your "provider"
But if you rent from Virgin and the like,
they (BT) get to you eventually.
So in fact they still maintain the monopoly.

I guess the other issue that has come out of this thread,
If it hadn't been for the internet, BT may well have
gone down the pan.
As I couldn't see them surviving on just the LL income.
Where as "most" houses and I guess all business's have internet.
 
Cobra said:
As I understand it, and has been said a few times, in the past,
IF you use another provider for the LL, and there is a fault,
BT have to repair that fault. not your "provider"
But if you rent from Virgin and the like,
they (BT) get to you eventually.
So in fact they still maintain the monopoly.
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The network is maintained by Openreach, part of the BT group of companies. BT wholesale sells the line rental services to other telecommunications companies for them to retail, one of these companies is BT retail. Another is Sky, another is talktalk etc etc etc

If your land line is with any provider (VM excluded as they have their own network) then when you report a fault to them they summon Openreach on your behalf to fix it. If you report a fault with your broadband to your ISP and they believe it to be a line fault, they summon Openreach on your behalf to fix it. BT retail and BT internet are "just another phone company" and "just another ISP" as far as Openreach are concerned when it comes to fixing faults, they get no priority or other special treatment.

VM is a special case as they have absolute monopolistic control of their network and do not allow unbundled/wholesale access to it like BT do. If your VM cable phone line or broadband develops a fault, VM fix it.
 
onomatopoeia said:
The network is maintained by Openreach, part of the BT group of companies. BT wholesale sells the line rental services to other telecommunications companies for them to retail, one of these companies is BT retail. Another is Sky, another is talktalk etc etc etc

If your land line is with any provider (VM excluded as they have their own network) then when you report a fault to them they summon Openreach on your behalf to fix it. If you report a fault with your broadband to your ISP and they believe it to be a line fault, they summon Openreach on your behalf to fix it. BT retail and BT internet are "just another phone company" and "just another ISP" as far as Openreach are concerned when it comes to fixing faults, they get no priority or other special treatment.

VM is a special case as they have absolute monopolistic control of their network and do not allow unbundled/wholesale access to it like BT do. If your VM cable phone line or broadband develops a fault, VM fix it.
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Still with BT here, and TBH the comment I made about them getting to it eventually, from from direct experience
of friends and relatives.
Maybe in fact, I agree, they should do it the way you state, but past experience tells me they don't.

The last fault I had, maybe a year back, now, they insisted that it was "my problem" not theirs.
(how they work that out I don't know)
But after "serial reporting" the issue they did turn out, a couple of days later,
and fix it, (Broken wire or something in the box over the road)
 
My phone is with BT, my internet isn't. My ISP has had three different engineers out from Openreach in the last month trying to track down a fault which is clearly in the line (none have succeeded, the people that turned up have been hopeless). These appointments have all been booked for next working day. Fortunately my employer is flexible about taking leave at short notice.

It seems a lot is down to how good of your provider (phone or broadband is) at accepting and handling fault reports.
 
My phone is also with BT and my ISP somewhere else.
As its the phone line that broke, it was BT that came out.

apparently one can "break" and the other still works.
That is you can use the phone, and not the internet and vice versa.
As it was explained to me by an engineer once,
the bit that the internet now runs off,
is rather like the "mobile signal carrier" that texts work from,
and was never designed to be used by the public.

"apparently"
 
They can break indepenently, mine has an intermittent fault on the broadband and no obvious fault on the voice line.

The broadband signals use the frequency ranges not used by voice calls, so above human hearing. DSL is line length dependent as the longer the line gets, the fewer of these high frequencies carry down the line the longer it gets (very simply put). The phone lines were designed and built to only carry the frequencies used by the human voice, approximately a 3kHz range, so DSL and even ISDN before it are beyond what it was intended for.
 
So, you folks who use mobile only, how much does it cost you per month, and does that figure include international calls?
 
andy700 said:
So, you folks who use mobile only, how much does it cost you per month, and does that figure include international calls?
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My original deal with 3 was unlimited data, landlines, mobiles and texts.

That wss £32 per month with a Galaxy S3. When my 18 month deal came up for renewal and as my S3 was working fine I got a renewal on the same terms but without a new phone for £18 per month with international calls covered. Was very useful as I travel to Ireland regularly. As mentioned in my post above, our 3 service at home became poor so they gave us a Home signal booster as all in the house plus sons and daughtee are on 3. As are our tradesmen.... You can register 32 numbers with 3 (they must be on the 3 network), and as the service uses broadband to create a virtual 'tower' it uses a lot of data allowance. If you are on an unlimited data plan it's covered so we have no problem on that score.

It's not an issue for us as it saves us trying to find signal and the mobile phone plans mean we know exactly what our bills are.

Again as mentioned our broadband is very good (we have fttc currently). The green cabinet is 70m from the house so that is the only length the copper cable we have to the exchange just under 2 miles away. We get 74Mbps download and 19Mbps upload so streaming services are no problem. To convert the above numbers to Mbytes pee second divide by 8.

I would like to drop the line rental charge but I pay a year in advance and that keeps it lower.

Will be getting Infinity 3 when it arrives but one way or another the maintenence of the line will be factored into the price.

As we have a wireless internet connected heating control system with an app on my phone I would like to think we will reduce our gas consumption by not having fixed times for the boiler to switcb on if we are out. Will monitor those costs and hope the savings will offset the line rentsl.... then the IP security system and I am looking at SMART lighting.

I think there is a potential in the market for the SMART home which when/if the full fibre service for BT to offer 100-300Mbps will offer more convergence technology (eg SMART door locks with NFC), the line rental will be buried in an all in charge.

Virgin Media will not serve the rural community around where I live unless they can get 12,000 households. We don't have 12,000 people let alone household so BT are doing pretty well. SWMBO signed us up a few years back with TalkTalk.... Terrible service but that was then

So all in all with the BT Vision service and unlimited infinity 2 and by paying line rental in advance (works out around £14 per month annualised) I pay BT £33 per month.

Overall I am content with that and I am loading the Broadband service with as much as I can (24 port gigabit managed switch attached to the router etc) SWMBO on Skype to her sisters and cousins etc, SMART TVs etc... My neighbour spends more on cigarettes per month than I do on my toys......

Oh yes. This is from my phone via VPN from Germany. Cost.... covered.

I thknk some people can lose sight of spend and may expect freebies but in reality the telecoms world is not a charity. Just have to decide on needs. My first use of proper internet was back in the 80s via my Open University course. 2400bps modem. My first digital camera was a 330k Kodak DC25 (£399 from PC World). An 8MB CF card for it was £57. You could get 3-4 jpegs on a single floppy disk....

Things change and we take for granted now, technology we could only dream of 25-30 years ago.

Steve
 
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andy700 said:
So, you folks who use mobile only, how much does it cost you per month, and does that figure include international calls?
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13.90 per month. All international calls are made using Skype or FaceTime, and as my 13.90 includes all you can eat data, there are no extra charges for calling my mates overseas.

Also when I go to New York next month, it won't cost me any extra for using my phone out there.
 
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andy700 said:
So, you folks who use mobile only, how much does it cost you per month, and does that figure include international calls?
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£14.90 a month, which gives 2000 minutes, 5000 texts and completely unlimited data (data can also be used tethered to any other device).

If I can't use Skype or FaceTime, I have some call-through numbers that allow international calls for 1p-3p to places I might need to call.
 
andy700 said:
So, you folks who use mobile only, how much does it cost you per month, and does that figure include international calls?
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I never make international calls,
although I have some relatives and friends abroad,
Like Ricco I find other ways of contacting them.

BT web site tells me that for an extra £5.85 / month I can get
600 minutes (Fair use) for 2.8p / minute.
Should I wish, I can get a very similar deal from my mobile.

Oh and all "I can eat" text phone web, it
started at 26 / month, but also started to creep up a little in the last 18 months,
I shall be having words in 6 months time ;)
 
If I didn't need a land line for the broadband, I would have just a mobile. Similarly, Mrs Nod has a land line at her studio but needs that for the card payment machine. Mobile options for that are available but would be more expensive and the land line also gives her broadband there if she needs to use it.

TBH, I don't really like phones of any sort and prefer (when possible) to visit people instead. Not always practical though!
 
Nod said:
TBH, I don't really like phones of any sort and prefer (when possible) to visit people instead. Not always practical though!
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Like nostalgia, that's a thing of the past, ( :D )
And certainly "generation specific" I would suggest :)
 
I have no landline, no TV just mobile but I have a pseudo local landline number on my Skype in plan. Means I can be anywhere in the country and appear to be home in Nottingham
 
The biggest problem with the landline is the number of a**hole junk calls, which for us, outnumber the genuine calls. I am TPS registered and have a call blocker but can't do anything about 'number with held calls' as the NHS use these for hospital appointments etc.
 
Cap'n Bill said:
The biggest problem with the landline is the number of a**hole junk calls, which for us, outnumber the genuine calls. I am TPS registered and have a call blocker but can't do anything about 'number with held calls' as the NHS use these for hospital appointments etc.
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Same here, but they still get through.
I can see the problem with the NHS. Bit of a pain that :(

I just leave my LL unplugged now unless I want to make a "freefone" call.
I still get charged for these on my mobile.
 
I don't know if I have been lucky but I have never had an unwanted call on my Skype_in number. I only give the number to a very restricted circle of people
 
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