My contract with plusnet comes to an end in March . Broadband and home phone . I can use phone for up to 1 hour inclusive. I’m paying £35.79 . My home phone is a comfort to me I chat with friends regularly I dislike talking on mobile phone as I can’t hear what’s being said , airwaves sounds and echoing.
So today I spoke with plusnet and been told in 2025 home phones will be phased out with them . If I decide to re contract I would be passed on to BT who will convert the line to digital and the cost will be £47.99 per month . I know 2025 is a while away yet but it will come round quickly .
Does anyone else dislike mobile phones to chat on and is it going to be inevitable home phones will be defunct
Not all providers offer the same service for the digital phone switchover. I’m sure that a forum member who is a plusnet user will be able to help you.
I’m with Zen. A few months ago they offered me conversion to full fibre for £33 pm with digital voice (phone service) available for an extra £7. The total was less than I was already paying but the real bonus was that I could plug my existing landline phones into the router, keep my landline phone number and have 1,000 free inclusive minutes per month to mobiles or landlines. The only downside is that in the event of broadband failure or power cuts, a router connected phone won’t work.
The switchover took less than a day - I’ve had no problems and I’ve saved a packet …
It sounds like you have a similar package deal as I have with Plusnet for broadband / phone - although my Contract still has another year to run - and this area is not scheduled to be switched to full fibre broadband until late 2024.
Like you @susan_m , I have always preferred to use my landline phone, especially for long chats with friends or family. I used to only use my mobile for making calls if I was away from home.
However, I have gradually been changing my habits so I can be “full fibre ready” and prepared for the loss of my landline phone when we do eventually switch over.
I think you can have a “landline” handset with a full fibre Broadband set-up but it seems a waste of money to pay an extra monthly fee for a telephone handset that plugs into the broadband line when I can just use my mobile phone to make calls either by using my WiFi Broadband signal or my mobile phone signal.
Until recently, I used to use Plusnet as my mobile signal provider as well as my Broadband provider and I used to struggle to get a clear mobile phone signal from home so conversations would keep breaking up.
Now that Plusnet (who use EE mobile signals) have announced they are pulling out of being a mobile signal provider, I switched to another company.
What an amazing difference it has made to the signal strength and sound quality.
My new provider is Lebara - they use Vodafone - and it is cheaper than the £7 per month I used to pay Plusnet too - Lebara costs only £1.99 per month for first 6 months, then just under £5 per month thereafter, for the same unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 5Gigs of data.
I also use my WiFi Broadband to make calls to close friends and family via WhatsApp from my mobile when I’m at home too and this also provides a clear sound quality - and it’s free even for calls to people living abroad, which is a big advantage.
I’m getting used to this new way of working - and I find that using a mobile on “loudspeaker” is much more comfortable than holding a phone to your ear for a long chat.
I’ve just treated myself to a pair of ear buds, which cost me £19 - they are comfortable to wear and make it even easier to hear people speaking on the phone, as the ear buds help to cancel out distracting background noise.
These changes will happen, whether we like it or not, so I think it’s best to try to make the best of the changes and try to get used to them gradually and make them work for me, instead of waiting until they are forced on me.
Now I’ve got on board, I rather wish I wasn’t tied in to a fixed contract for another year because there is another company, called ZZZoom, which has already laid full fibre cables right past the end of my driveway.
If I wasn’t tied into a Contract with Plusnet using the old BT wiring for another year and was willing to give up my old landline phone, I could be enjoying a cheaper and faster, more efficient full fibre Broadband direct to my property now.
BT had better improve the lines if that is what they want. My older sister has a new line and phone and it’s awful. All I can hear is warbling/bubbling. Very off putting.
I got rid of the landline several years ago, none of the family or friends used them anymore and only calls were from cold callers. Sooooo, out it went and I like my mobi, don’t have problems with it at all. I have a sim only contract with Three for £10 a month and as I seldom use the phone outside except for the camera I never goes over my data allowance, the calls are free and so are texts up to 500 but I never use that amount in the month. As soon as we are home it reconnects it’s self to the Internet so I can use as much data as I want.
I am with you, my landline went ages ago, it was only used by scammers anyway, Everybody I knew called me on my mobile. My kids have never had a landline since they left home.
Just jet one of these, they plug into your mobile phone earpiece socket, much better sound quality than the landline, feels like your old landline phone but with the advantage that you can take it any where. $20 from Amazon.
Am presuming it is the same in the UK but the landline really is just an expensive waste of money. I don’t think any of them come close to competing with a mobile phone on cost or convenience.
It definitely does pay to shop around but, again I presume the UK is the same as here, there are plenty of comparison sites. There are no (or certainly very few) contracts for mobile phones any more they are all month by month so you can swap around at will to take advantage of the special offers to attract new customers. That certainly keeps them all on their toes.
(Having said that I guess I am with my current provider for a year because I pre-paid $230 for a year of unlimited domestic and international calls and texts plus 160Gb of data.)
I still have both landline and cell phones. I agree, when at home I much prefer talking on the landline. I hear better, and it’s more comfortable for me. It’s only $20 a month when bundled with my internet and TV. Well worth it and it’s a very easy number, too! I’ll keep it while I can.
As I understand it your landline will still work once the engineer has been out to put in the new fibres.
Plusnet are owned by BT anyway…
I have to do a new deal with BT shortly.
I expect them to send an engineer out.
I very recently renewed my landline/broadband contract with EE. Yep, BT handle the landline side of things now although through EE. The transition was seamless, I had these horrible thoughts about having to get a new router etc. Fortunately it wasn’t necessary.
Over here the trend also is away from landline phones but if you are, as I am, with Telecom as an internet provider, you get the landline as part of the bundle. I prefer it anyway since I don’t like talking on a mobile because of the radiation and the connection of a landline phone is better, too.
Your phone will only continue to work after Full Fibre installation if your Internet Service Provider offers a Digital Voice (VOIP) service.
Plusnet is not offering this service - their full fibre broadband packages do not have an option for a home phone.
As you say, Plusnet are a subsidiary of BT but they seem to have decided on a policy of offering the Digital Voice service only to BT customers and not to Plusnet customers.
So once the old phone landline has gone and full fibre broadband to the property has been installed, Plusnet customers who particularly want to keep a home phone will have to either switch to BT or switch to another Internet Service Provider which does offer a VOIP phone option - or stay with Plusnet and sort out a VOIP service from a 3rd party provider - there’s quite a few of them to choose from but most of their basic offerings start about £10 pm,
I guess BT / Plusnet are thinking that most Plusnet customers will take the easiest option and either give up their home phone and stay with Plusnet for cheaper Broadband or switch to BT which is more expensive Broadband but includes the option of keeping a home phone via Digital Voice for no extra cost.
I think they are bound to lose some customers to competitors, though - there’s other Full Fibre Broadband providers who also offer the Digital Voice option too,
Either way, there will be an extra monthly cost to keeping a Digital Voice home phone line, whether it shows as an add-on charge to the basic price of Broadband or whether it’s “built into” a more expensive Broadband package like BT - which is a bit of a rip-off when your phone will only be using the broadband service you’re already paying for.
