No worries on the termination fees, we've been out of contract for a while. We knew that full fibre was coming this year so we have been paying a bit over the odds for the past few months so we have options open for fibre.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Yes Sipgate Basic / Starter will happily have 2 concurrent SIP registrations. So you could have spouse using acrobits client on their smartphone in Marbella seeing/hearing the “home” phone ring at the same time as your in Margate. Either of you could pick up the call as if you were at home in Market Harborough. The other party would know no different.

You also get your local area code number of your choosing as allocated when you start your account + an additional ported-in number active in the account. You can set the outbound CID to be that of your original Sipgate number, ported in landline number or another number like your mobile should you wish.

Sounds ideal and definitely the way to go.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

So you could have spouse using acrobits client on their smartphone in Marbella seeing/hearing the “home” phone ring at the same time as your in Margate.

Side note: if you're on Android and set up Google Play Family Library then you only need to pay once for the app. Presumably the same works for Apple family plans too.

Most certainly does. Thanks @candlerb for pointing this out. One of the great benefits of family membership of these services.

Thanks. Very good point. Though I think in this case OP is good to go as said. Maybe I should edit with a “0.” In future 😂

sipgate account all set up and waiting for the start code to arrive by post so that I can activate the account. The letter arrived today but when I enter the start code I get an error message saying it is incorrect, grrrr!!!
I've raised a ticket with them so let's see what they say.

Maybe a Sipgate a/c for incoming (DID) VoIP calls, and one or more accounts with the Betamax VoIP resellers, for least-cost-routed outgoings? Voipcheap.co.uk and many other Betamax providers allow you to spoof your CLID which is always useful.

For a softphone, the Zoiper app is great. Very stable, light on the battery, highly configurable, and the codebase is regularly maintained and improved. The free version is nearly identical to the paid version, supports multiple VoiP accounts on multiple phones, has numerous audio codecs, etc etc. And if Linux smartphones are your thing, there are several VoiP softphone apps in development, albeit in relative infancy.

At home, we have a Yealink IP phone, connected via WiFi to a router which works well.

Or if you wanna go hardcore, maybe an open-source Asterisk PBX server?!