Keep landline or port to VOIP?

My Sky router currently allows a dect phone to plug in the back. I may be moving provider and the phone cost is additional to broadband cost, or non existent. We make no outgoing calls on our landline, but it is handy to have the one number for the wife and myself at home, plus getting older family members to ring a mobile can be a pain. I presume transfer is easy and I was looking at something like https://www.voipfone.co.uk/services/porting. I see you need an adaptor. Are they locked to the provider like a sim card is? Would moving providers mean a new adaptor each time? If I go for something like this, would it be as simple as plug adaptor into LAN port and away it goes?

Thanks for the answers. If there is a "VOIP made easy" guide somewhere, that would be great

Mark

If you are not making outbound calls, then Andrews & Arnold are your cheapest option (£1,44 pcm). They now charge £12 one off off setup (used to be free) and £12 for porting in an existing number. https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/prices/

You would need to check with them whether you have to pay for setup if you are porting in an existing number.

I don't know whether you can configure your Sky router to be used with an different VoIP provider, so you would need to get either
* a SIP phone (could be wired or DECT phone), or
* a SIP terminal Adapter (e.g. Grandstream) to plug in your existing DECT base, or
* a broadband router that can do everything (SIP and DECT), e.g. AVM fritzbox

No need to worry about "locked" equipment, as long as the equipment allows you to edit the SIP account details, you can use it with any VoIP provider. Best to buy your equipment on the open market (e.g. ebay) rather than from a VoIP provider, that should be cheaper as well.

Unfortunately, setting up VoIP is not quite plug and play but not too difficult either, a lot of people here and elsewhere who should be able to help (if you provider can't/won't help) .

You need to be careful if you want to port a landline service with associated broadband service as the broadband may get cancelled.

If you move both broadband and phone to A&A they would be able to manage.

You could port your number to their VOIP service.

I use a Gigaset N300 with Gigaset DECT phones. I also have an earlier version of the Cisco ATA 191 which is connected to a wired phone and the N300.

If you move provider for example to BT then you have Digital Voice and you must use the SmartHub 2 router to plug your old vintage phone into the telephone port of your router. However, if you get the Alexa Phone dect, which you'll get for free then you can simply register it once with the Smart Hub 2 router and you are good to go.

Porting number is easy. I was with TalkTalk with analogue phone service and I switched to BT FTTC Digital Voice and it allowed me to migrate swiftly to DV 2 years ago. Analogue is switched off so you won't get dial tone if you tried to plug it in the master socket.

If you migrate to an existing Openreach FTTC/FTTP service then Digital Voice will be carried over with the phone provided by your ISP.
However, if you migrate to an Altnet FTTP service from Openreach then things can get trickier. You'll have to switch to an independent VOIP service and manually port the number over before cancelling your existing Openreach service.

It depends also on the provider you switch to. Some Altnets like Hyperoptic and Community Fibre for example have FTTP broadband only and FTTP plus phone service. If phone service is provided then porting number can be made. But you have to either choose the ISP with phone service or switch to a VOIP service separately.

If indeed you switch to Voipfone then you need the adapter to plug into the router to use their phone service. I do not know if buying a Grandstream HandyTone HT801 ATA will necessarily work with any ISP phone service. Reading reviews on Amazon it shows it has to be configured separately for every VOIP service.

FTTC from now onwards will be treated as SOGEA where broadband is only provided by the copper line and Digital Voice is used for phone service via broadband.
If you use phone service like that of BT+ Digital Voice then you can simply use the phone service of your ISP and not need to worry about the need of using a VOIP adapter.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

It depends also on the provider you switch to. Some Altnets like Hyperoptic and Community Fibre for example have FTTP broadband only and FTTP plus phone service. If phone service is provided then porting number can be made. But you have to either choose the ISP with phone service or switch to a VOIP service separately.

If indeed you switch to Voipfone then you need the adapter to plug into the router to use their phone service. I do not know if buying a Grandstream HandyTone HT801 ATA will necessarily work with any ISP phone service. Reading reviews on Amazon it shows it has to be configured separately for every VOIP service.

FTTC from now onwards will be treated as SOGEA where broadband is only provided by the copper line and Digital Voice is used for phone service via broadband.
If you use phone service like that of BT+ Digital Voice then you can simply use the phone service of your ISP and not need to worry about the need of using a VOIP adapter.

I already have a digital voice type product with Sky, but am moving to Plusnet, who now no longer provide a phone service. I have managed to find a voip provider now and have arranged my number port for the day after the switchover. As PN don't support landlines, it shouldn't trigger the line cancellation as the number will be in limbo for the 31 days (fingers crossed).

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

You need to be careful if you want to port a landline service with associated broadband service as the broadband may get cancelled.

Hoping to avoid this as my landline service with Sky terminates on the 1st July and my number hopefully ports in on 2nd July.

Got a voipfone account now at £1.50pm and free port in. they say the adaptor comes pre- configured, but can be changed for any provider with the web interface, so happy with that.

Did your number port work out all ok?

I can't see a Voipfone deal for £1.50/m - did you get a special discount?

Number ported all okay. The £1.50 was just for their supplied number if I recall. I thought I had checked it out thoroughly, but emailed them in the end and got the following:

"The Voipfone Flex does not include any phone numbers or any minutes.

The Number you are Porting In, will cost £3.00 plus VAT every 30 days."

I'm happy with that. I am using their app to access my calls at the moment.

Just for completeness, in case anyone else comes along with the same question.

1. Instead of an ATA you can use a softphone on your mobile. I use Acrobits Softphone and it's well worth the £6 one-time charge (and if you have family sharing enabled for your app store then you only need to pay for it once to install on multiple handsets).

Because it uses native push notifications, it doesn't drain your battery; the app is started when an incoming call arrives.

There's a slightly more expensive version called Groundwire that has some extra features for things like multi-way calling.

2. As long as your SIP provider supports multiple registrations, then an incoming call can ring on multiple handsets.

3. If you're only interested in receiving incoming calls on your "landline" number, and there are not many minutes per month, then another option is to skip SIP entirely and simply forward the landline calls to a mobile.

https://numberpeople.co.uk/ are an example of a provider who can do that. (I have not used them).