VOIP for mum

Mu mum is 91 and doesn't want to lose her landline. I'm looking into various options that will allow her to have the internet for her tablet and freely tv but still keep her precious landline as she cant use a mobile due to her dexterity. I'm currently looking at voipvoice.co.uk who offer voip via a dect phone adapter and give 1000 minutes for £15 a month. Is this a good deal as I struggling to find comparison sites or any way to find reputable companies that provide VOIP via 3 DECT handsets. Any help gratefully appreciated.

You could connect a landline type wired phone to a Cisco SPA112 which could connect to a Voip ISP such as Voipfone.

Alternatively I have a Gigaset N300 Dect base statiion and several Gigaset Dect phones.

Andrews and Arnold are a repuitable VOIP ISP and hardware supplier. https://www.aa.net.uk/

Depending on how much support you are able to provide looking after services from multiple suppliers, who currently provides broadband and phone services, and what broadband options are available as this may well impact the migration strategy. It may be worth considering an ISP which offers broadband and a digital voice / VoIP option.

It would be useful to know the current providers, if the connection to the premises is copper (ADSL), part fibre (FTTC/SOGEA) and if there is a stop sell due to being connected to a fibre priority exchange. The checker https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/ will indicate what Openreach connections are available or not to ISPs.

£15/mo seems a lot, even if that includes a VoIP DECT base or ATA. For example the Zen Digital Voice option taken on top of their broadband is £7/mo with 1000 minutes included, IIRC, and AAISP have a PAYG VoIP service which is £1.50/mo plus call charges.

Also consider if you need any power backup solution so it is possible to make calls when there is a power outage.

If my wife did not insist on our have a landline/VOIP number we would just use our mobiles, for which we have £5 per month sim only deals that provide us with unlimited calls and unlimited texts with a small amount of mobile data, (that we keep switched off and we never use), for just £5 per month for each sim card.

Personally, for mobile use, I use a Google Pixel 7 Pro phone which has a large easy to see screen and I keep it inside a PVC Flip cover so I dropped it without any issue. (I could if I wished to link it to make/receive VOIP calls and I could instruct it to make calls via voice command by just pressing the Mic Icon and telling it to call someone in the contacts list).

Don't forget that she may also be able to use her tablet, (eg. and IPAD), to make facetime calls.

Also with VOIP it should be noted that if the power goes off the phone goes off so you may want add an uninterruptible power supply if you go down the VOIP route.

With regard to VOIP Providers: personally, I tend to prefer to separate the VOIP providers from the Broadband Providers as changing one service does not then require you to change the other.

For Broadband FTTP we use BT and for VOIP we use two VOIP Providers which are; Sipgate, (no monthly fee but no longer available to new customers), and Voipify which costs us £5.40, (including VAT), per month with 200 minutes of free 01 and 02 calls per month included.

https://www.voipify.net/?mtm_cid=235201820&mtm_kwd=&...

After that the call charge per minute is quite good:

https://www.voipify.net/call-charges/

Regarding, phones we use a Gigaset N300A Base station and we have six Gigaset C575a Dect Phones and the system works great with no issues.

Regarding keeping the old landline number; when we changed to VOIP we just took up one of the local VOIP phone numbers that were free to add and this meant that we could set up the VOIP line while the old landline was still operational and all of the nuisance calls, (solar panel sales etc.), that the old landline number periodically suffered from all disappeared.

Edited by Fido (Mon 08-Jun-26 06:28:17)

Personally, I would keep it simple and go for an ISP that can provide digital voice.
Vodafone currently offering 150 Mbps for £ 25pm + £10 for unlimited UK calls.
Their technical support isn't brilliant - if you don't get the right person the CS agents read off the screen which is the same information you can get from the website and wouldn't need to contact them for.
We've been on fttp with them for 2½ years, had a bit of problem when first installed, in that they failed to update the router firmware for digital voice, but since then only had one voice failure that was sorted by rebooting the router.
Hope you don't mind me adding that they were very good after we added an elderly relative's line to our account but she passed away shortly after. I expected an argument about ceasing the contract but was the easiest and shortest call I had with them - resolved in a 10 minute phone call, with a real person, and email to send the death certificate.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

You could connect a landline type wired phone to a Cisco SPA112 which could connect to a Voip ISP such as Voipfone.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/un...

its 6 years eol, and any cve (for which there are many) are not patched. Do not use or suggest the spa112

In reply to a post by Fido:

If my wife did not insist on our have a landline/VOIP number we would just use our mobiles

As you've noted, with VOIP/SIP you can use your mobiles for the "landline" number too. For that I recommend Acrobits Softphone, because it uses native push notifications to wake the phone on incoming calls - this means it's not running continuously in the background draining your battery.

It is a one-time purchase (£6 IIRC) and you only need to buy it once if you have Family Sharing, although if one of you has Android and one has iOS then it's two purchases. Occasionally it's offered at a discounted price so you might want to keep an eye on it.

There's a slightly more expensive version ("Groundwire") which has some extra bells and whistles that I didn't need - things like 3-way calling I think.

Oh, and you do need to check that your VOIP provider allows multiple registrations, if you have multiple mobiles and/or a wired base station all connecting to the same SIP account.

The big problem which nobody talks about with voip - is support. Which can be very skimpy or non existant.

https://www.voipfone.co.uk/

these guys are one of the better outfits for support. And they do unlimited for 14 p/m

I'm using aa and idnet for two lines.

Both can provide you with hardware ..

What dect phones have you got?

If you are ok pluggin in settings then you can get away with no preconfigured hardware..

In reply to a post by Malti121:

Mu mum is 91 and doesn't want to lose her landline

With a 91 year old I would not worry about third party VoIP solutions.

What companies are supplying the phone and broadband today, if you have both from the same company then they should keep everything working and all you will need to do is move the wire from the phone into the back of the internet router.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Malti121:

Mu mum is 91 and doesn't want to lose her landline

With a 91 year old I would not worry about third party VoIP solutions.

What companies are supplying the phone and broadband today, if you have both from the same company then they should keep everything working and all you will need to do is move the wire from the phone into the back of the internet router.

a lot of weight should be placed on what you have suggested. Diy route is normally great but unless the op is under budget contraints then the route may be the best way forward.