Telephone and Virgin

I am currently a Virgin internet subscriber and a Plusnet telephone subscriber.

I am considering switching to Virgin for the telephone service. I understand that Virgin do not supply a messaging service, is there an equivalent way of keeping a note of who calls and forwarding calls to other phone numbers.

Also how does the claity of speach compare to the regular BT / Plusnet service.

Thanks for any info.

Have you thought about switching the service to a VOIP one? e.g. Sipgate Basic?

In reply to a post by DRW:

I am considering switching to Virgin for the telephone service. I understand that Virgin do not supply a messaging service, is there an equivalent way of keeping a note of who calls and forwarding calls to other phone numbers.

You know you will need a coax connection into your home, a cable modem “hub” that the analogue phone plugs into?

I use virgin for broadband and telephone,phone service for me is voip,well I assume it is as phone plugs into the virgin router

In reply to a post by steve195527:

I use virgin for broadband and telephone,phone service for me is voip,well I assume it is as phone plugs into the virgin router

Yes, it likely is VOIP if that's how it set up.

My suggestion to the original poster was more about switching their current phone service/line to a dedicated VOIP provider, and therefore de-coupling the Internet provision from phone provision (which in this case they already have by virtue of separate providers, but it would likely be a cheaper option if they used a VOIP provider instead of Plusnet).

Having a separate VOIP service has a number of advantages. It will make any future broadband migration easier, and open up more options, such as FTTP providers which don't do voice.

If you want to use it with your existing phones, then you'll need to buy a separate Analogue Telephone Adapter (ATA). However if you have only one or two phones, you could just buy ethernet or wifi connected VOIP phones instead, and get rid of your analogue phones. If you have cordless phones you can get a VOIP DECT base station.

If you have a smartphone you could make and receive landline calls via an app on your mobile, without any extra hardware at all. Acrobits Softphone works very well, and is easily worth the £6. If you have an Android family account then a single £6 will allow all your family members to install it; I presume the same works for Apple family sharing too. With this setup, you can receive landline calls even when you're not at home.

You can combine these options: e.g. have a mobile app *and* an ATA or physical VOIP phones, and all will ring simultaneously.

Sipgate Basic has a zero monthly fee, although you pay £30 to port your existing number. Porting the number (to any VOIP provider) will cease the Plusnet line. Sipgate Basic's outgoing call prices are reasonable for moderate usage; for high usage you can buy inclusive packages, although you can get cheaper inclusive packages on your mobile phone.

Thanks for providing a more eloquent and informative post than I could manage

Thanks to alll of you for the answers to my questions
I now have to extract the digit and get the process started

Thank you