Call Charges, BT Digital Voice vs A&A VoIP

Whilst considering how we are going to 'upgrade' t'internet and phone in one of our properties I was looking at phone charges, at present the occupant of the 'granny annex' has a BT 700mins phone only plan, but barely uses any of that, so when the fibre goes in was thinking maybe just have PaYG.
Unless I'm reading something wrong BT charge for Payg are extortionate, i.e. nearly 30p per minute is the only figure I can find on their website, is this right? I look at my A&A account and it's 1.5p/min at peak times.

See: A&A Voip call prices

You also need to buy the Voip hardware such as the Gigaset N300 and Dect phones, or an ATA with a wired phone, and supply power.

The present phone in the 'granny annex' will work with a HT801, the differance in DV vs VoIP 'line rental' would pay off one of those in around a year, but it's the cost per minute for BT which I'm struggling with.

Have you compared the costs for digital voice with another ISP.
We managed to get a calls included package at £25 pm on Vodafone.
Doesn't look like that's available now but worth shopping around.
Call plans are certainly available much cheaper than BT phone only.

I should point out, we are looking at BT purely so there is one point of contact if there's a problem and we are not on hand to sort it out, but this is looking like it might add £20 per month over using a 'cheap' ISP plus A&A for phone.

https://img01.products.bt.co.uk/content/dam/bt/store...

Although the above shows a 700 mins call package, when my parents contract came up for renewal (FTTP + DV) I was told only the unlimited call package was available. I couldn't convince Dad to move from BT to A&A for both FTTP and VOIP - and I understand that if I tried to move the DV to A&A it would have disrupted (cancelled) the BT FTTP (hence why I considered moving both to A&A)

Edit: I understand A&A view FTTP and VOIP as separate entities, so the FTTP (or VOIP) could be moved to another provider with affecting the other entity.

Edited by BarkingMad (Mon 06-Oct-25 09:07:43)

In reply to a post by Bushy2025:

Have you compared the costs for digital voice with another ISP.

Not as yet, was trying to keep it simple, so if there's a problem and we are not to hand the resident can contact any other of the family and get it sorted, the problems the resident can cause with misinformation is astounding.

30p per minute sounds about right these days. Maybe with a call setup charge too.

(Thinks: I wonder if Carrier Pre Select still a thing with digital lines? Probably not)

Most likely though, the best option is to get a mobile phone for outgoing calls. Plenty of plans available at £5 per month with 1000 minutes or more (e.g. Lebara).

In reply to a post by candlerb:

30p per minute sounds about right these days. Maybe with a call setup charge too.

(Thinks: I wonder if Carrier Pre Select still a thing with digital lines? Probably not)

Most likely though, the best option is to get a mobile phone for outgoing calls. Plenty of plans available at £5 per month with 1000 minutes or more (e.g. Lebara).

We've tried a mobile, getting the simplest Duro phone we could get, after months of grief over it we gave up.

Depends what kind of grief you mean. If the grief is signal strength indoors, then choosing a handset and an operator which support Wifi Calling should solve that.

If you want to get fibre+voice as an all-in-one package from a big name provider, then your other options are Sky, Zen, or Vodafone. I doubt their PAYG rates are significantly better than BT.