anyone stop using home phone line

not had ours plugged in since we moved house 14 months ago

will save me £27 a month

couldnt get on the phone as a kid

had to book my time a week in advance ..


i would never have quessed that folk would give up their landlines


better keep it just in case the phone masts get knocked out by police
dealing with an emergency one day ....

Many have it as they are forced to have it with their broadband. If you are able to get cable, you don't have to have a landline. If mobile broadband was much more reliable & the speeds were higher, I'd think that many more would bin their landlines. It's a rip off. You should be able to buy your landline up to the green box thingy. You should not need to rent it forever.

many/most or maybe all give you a discount if you pay for the whole year's landline rental.

The only reason to have a landline these days is to help your credit rating.

Gotta agree with the OP here. I'm getting international, withheld and unavailable calls daily now and Virgin want to charge me to bar these. I want to just cut the bloody thing off but the alternative of microwaving my head does not appeal either!

unplugged years ago.. Every time i answered it i regretted answering it.

No mobile phone signal in this house (except for one or two bars of 3G at the bedroom window). I can use EE wifi to make and receive texts and calls, but if the broadband, or my router, is down, which happens, then I'd be shafted in a medical emergency without a landline. (I live alone out in the sticks; the dog's very clever, but I couldn't really trust her to find a neighbour and ask them to follow her Lassie-style, if I were in trouble.)

Not actually used the bloody thing once in nearly six years here. Haven't even answered it, and every single call turned out to be a cold-call on investigating the number.

yeh I never use my house phone either really, only use the line for the broadband

Rarely use my landline these days.
BT have put their prices up so much it's now actually to use my mobile

^actually cheaper I meant to say

Nov 15, 2016 -- 10:19AM, Burton-Brewers wrote:

not had ours plugged in since we moved house 14 months ago

how do u use broadband with no landline? are u tethering from a mobile phone?

^sorry that was meant for xmoneyx

I look forward to cold calls so I can turn the tables and waste their time buy amusing myself asking daft questions putting on loud Aussie accents......."G'day mate, before I tell you whether I have had an accent or injury in the last 3 years can I ask you what your wife's favorites sexual position is ?", takes the edge of annoyance of being out out anyway.

I had my bt phone line installed nearly three months ago but I have still not purchased a phone to go with it.  If it wasn't for broadband I would not have it installed.  If it wasn't for playing poker I would not have got broadband or a phone line.  I used to get along very well with tethering my mobile and any long term use I would go to the library and use their computers.

Mobile signal is poor so have to use one.  But use a white card so calls are cheap, to call Canada instead of BTs 20p/min I pay 1p or 2p/min I think it is.

Got a line never plugged a phone into it in 3 yrs. don't even know the number.

The problem is (I'm with VM) that you can't get away without paying the line rental which with VM has shot up over the last few years and is now £17.99 per month, so even if I cut out the phone landline I would still have to pay the £17.99 per month as I'm also using their line for my 150Mb speed broadband and a basic TV package. The line rental is a large percentage cost (about 35%) of the whole deal!

WTF is a landline ??


seriously haven't had one for 8 years now.

Nov 16, 2016 -- 8:20AM, Platini wrote:

WTF is a landline ??seriously haven't had one for 8 years now.

A landline telephone (also known as land line, land-line, main line, home phone, landline, fixed-line, and wireline) refers to a phone that uses a metal wire or fibre optic telephone line for transmission as distinguished from a mobile cellular line, which uses radio waves for transmission.

you won't get one over VM ,  they should be called gimmicks r us  .

I got rid of my VM landline last year, i sent their Tv STB back to them too. I just have broadband internet with them now.

Smar Tarse - but you still have to pay the £17.99 monthly line rental don't you as you're still using their line for your broadband connection even if you've decided to get rid of your landline phone and TV package?

Just logged into my VM account. My Package VIVID 152 Optical Fibre £35.75 a month, No Tv Service, No Phone Service.

Upgrade Options :

Home Phone.
Upgrade from an extra £15.76 a month.
£51.51 a month.
Line rental Included.
£14.99 Activation Fee.

Yes, I'm paying just over £50 per month for all 3 items including the line rental. So it's as I thought - £35.75 per month for the broadband and line rental.

Smar Tarse
Smar Tarse 16 Nov 16 17:23 Joined: 01 Feb 07 | Topic/replies: 6,038 | Blogger: Smar Tarse's blog
I got rid of my VM landline last year, i sent their Tv STB back to them too. I just have broadband internet with them now.

That's interesting ST - looking at Mokiboni's post 16 Nov 16 13:34 - he seems to think that you can't avoid paying it. My VM phone line is separate from the broadband cable so I don't see why you can't cancel the landline and keep some other services. The line rental has been going up every yr with hardly any explanation almost like a stealth tax.

Handy in an emergency. Battery never runs out. I think they still work if there's a power fail as long as exchange is working?
But the BT line rental is ridiculous given the line would still be there for DSL if you cut the phone part off, it's a rip off.

crystalhunt - I have just ONE VM cable coming into the house and there's a splitter in one of the bedrooms that split that one cable into three - telephone, TV and broadband and those three separate cables are spread at different positions throughout the building. The line rental applies to that one cable entering the house and the rental applies to that single cable, irrespective of how many of the three items that you choose to accept and the full line rental cost applies even if you choose only one item of the three available.

Smar Tarse isn't getting a good deal there, £36 just for broadband is bloody expensive. He is being top loaded for not having any other services.

The practice of having a mandatory landline with broadband is currently being looked at by the regulator. It will result in a separation of the two I'm sure but expect more top loading as per the case here.

I have VM phone line always unplugged too, ironically I only ever plug it in to call 150 and get my annual retention deal

Smar Tarse isn't getting a good deal there, £36 just for broadband is bloody expensive. He is being top loaded for not having any other services.

The practice of having a mandatory landline with broadband is currently being looked at by the regulator. It will result in a separation of the two I'm sure but expect more top loading as per the case here.

I have VM phone line always unplugged too, ironically I only ever plug it in to call 150 and get my annual retention deal

I cancelled the phone-line and at the same time told them to upgrade my broadband to VIVID 152 Optical Fibre, that took me back up to £30 ish IIRC. Since then it has gone up to the now £35.75

I don't know what 'VIVID 152 Optical Fibre' is. All I know is that I have optical fibre broadband cable and it's 150mB speed which is very fast and I'm more than pleased with the speed and reliability of the service.

Over the last few years, I've taken VM's offer up of paying the line rental a year in advance and this year I have received a reduction on the monthly payments of approximately 14.7% which is nowhere as good a deal as in previous years, when the reduction used to be about 33%.

So, my deal at the moment is as follows:

150Mb unlimited downloads optical fibre broadband.
A basic TV package similar to Freeview, but it includes ATR (which Freeview doesn't apparently).
Landline phone with FREE unlimited calls to other UK landlines (including 0870 and 0845 numbers) 24 hours, 7 days a week.

Total monthly bill for the above is approximately £53.

Well it wasn't hard to spot when they all started offering broadband only deals. Line rental was about £11 at that time, and the broadband deals went up about the same amount.

Bit like Buy It Now with free postage on ebay, look at the cheaper deals and you have to pay postage.

Sky Talk Evenings and Weekends Extra £4

knocked £4 off

never realised I never had cheapest