Sipgate are basic (pardon the pun with their package name) but good.

You can get away from ATA type adapters if you use a DECT cordless phone (or several) that have a base just plugs into your broadband connection. I’ve used a Siemens system like that with their N300A IP base. It will work seemlesly with Sipgate and any other SIP provider.

In the fullness of time you can port your existing landline e number over to Sipgate (or another provider) rather than having to give out a new landline number.

Thanks, I'd not seen the N300 range, that looks like a good option for both landline + VOIP setup.
I'll take a further look.

Yeah, stupidly I didn't think of porting the number to VOIP when I cancelled my Virgin contract

It was all such a hassle (months & months of them not resolving speed & latency issues - everything went pear shaped in March 2020, after 6 years without problems and they were massively oversubscribed in my area) - that I was finally just pleased to be rid of them.

They let me out of the contract early because they failed to fix the issues after promising and missing 4 planned dates for resolution. As far as I know they still haven't fixed it properly (some of my neighbours are still hitting issues).

I was running multi-wan for a month or so after getting a JohnLewis/PlusNet connection put in because I couldn't put up with the VirginMedia service anymore and had the "mwan" package running nicely on the OpenWRT install - with traffic profiling setup.

I also had automated speed tests running every 15 minutes on the VirginMedia connection stored in a database with a Grafana front-end just so I could prove to Virgin that their issues were obviously contention based (during peak 'work hours' it ground to a halt, often 0.5Mbps on my supposedly 200Mbps connection). And jitter rates were horrific (so lots of lost packets / retransmission).

Anyway, the VDSL/ FTTC connection is much more stable, albeit too slow for my liking.

In reply to a post by MilesR:

Anyway, the VDSL/ FTTC connection is much more stable, albeit too slow for my liking.

Yes, if the coax DOCSIS network is oversubscribed usability collapses very fast. I am lucky to be in the Surrey/Hampshire border franchise, on the Guildford head end, and friends of mine (too far for ADSL originally) have been on this network for 15+ years, without issue. I had some local issues with the cabinet last summer, causing disconnects, hopefully now resolved.

I left Plusnet at the end of 2019 as the upload speed collapsed, having been on ADSL then FTTC since 2004 in this location, the download started close to 60, when I left was just managing 40, but the upload started around 8, and dropped to between 2 and 3, which for my home working was problematic.

So I risked VM, and touching wood, the 200/20 service is relatively stable. I have seen a slow upload of 10 a couple of times. My only other option would be 4G; and I have strong EE and Three signal, the Three service here is very slow, the EE is good, but the lockdown/pandemic has showed how varied these can get. One day 200 Mbps, the next 15 Mbps

I described the way I got Digital Voice on the SH2 to work on the lan behind my Asus router on page 7 of this thread, but I didn't post the source code for my hack to the code of rp-pppoe (version 3.14). I have uploaded it here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uq1oKBGCtChEvv1H9Ut... This is specific to Asus routers as it needs to change the Host_Uniq tag on the router and restart the PPPoE session. Something similar should be possible with OpenWRT and other routers.

I have now automated everything and so I can restart the SH2, my Asus router or the linux server that pppoe-server is running on and everything automatically reconnects. It's all been working without issue since 1st Jan.

Have you considered talking to the OpenWRT team to get this merged into their codebase and exposed in the admin UI and then hopefully it can make its way into other projects based on OpenWRT?

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Sipgate are basic (pardon the pun with their package name) but good.

You can get away from ATA type adapters if you use a DECT cordless phone (or several) that have a base just plugs into your broadband connection

Sipgate works for me. I'm using a FritzBox router which has a built-in VoIP connection and acts as the DECT base station. I don't know what other VoIP providers offer but you really can't beat Sipgate's monthly fee.

In reply to a post by brookheather:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

BT Retail (residential, not business) don't sell broadband without voice,

They do now:

https://www.bt.com/broadband/broadband-without-landline

Wonder if there’s a way of BT Group staff taking advantage of that. At my address is a couple of quid cheaper a month not to have dialtone.

Those FAQs are hilarious - most of them keep saying NO LANDLINE. USE MOBILE.

I use the Siemens N300A IP base with my existing landline and two Sipgate accounts. I'm not sure if Siemens have discontinued it or not but it's still easy enough to get hold of it.