How to leave BT FTTC and ensure phone number is not lost

OK a family member is just out of contract with BT and currently has FTTC with PSTN Line.

The desired plan is to run with another ISP for the FTTC service and port the number over to another provider.

Now what is the bullet proof way to ensure the cherished phone number is not lost and how to switch the FTTC service with the absolute minimum of down time to the new provider?

Nothing is bulletproof but the surest way will be to move the phone to an independent VOIP provider first. After that is done, change ISP at your leisure. The phone will continue to work.

This assumes that a period without broadband is acceptable, porting the number probably will be successful ( not 100% guaranteed , nothing is ) but the associated BT broadband service will be ceased , which will need the new ISP to order a new service ( which will be after the cease order has completed it ‘journey’ ) so the lead time , for the BT cease and then ‘new’ ISP to successfully provide service could be a few days , or even longer , there is also the small possibility that the new provider can’t actually order FTTC if the cabinet is at capacity with someone else waiting to ‘grab’ the port as it becomes available and a ISP on behalf of someone else gets in before your ISP…..

Edited by Iniltous (Sat 02-Nov-24 12:38:54)

Yep, iIiltous, you are right. I am already thinking in terms of FTTP only

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

... what is the bullet proof way to ensure the cherished phone number is not lost and how to switch the FTTC service with the absolute minimum of down time to the new provider?

Given that the existing incoming landline cable to the house will already have at least two pairs of phone wires, your family member could order from the new ISP a new additional SOGEA installation - that would involve fitting a second master socket to the existing cable using a spare copper pair, without the need for a new cable being installed.

Once the new ISP's VDSL service was up and running, there would be almost zero downtime switching their broadband from the old BT service to the new ISP, and would avoid the slight chance hazard of the street cabinet not having any spare connections.

They could then port their BT phone number to their chosen VoIP provider, and in doing so ceasing the BT broadband in the process.
When I ported my phone number to VoIP, the downtime of having a working phone was about 30 minutes.

The disadvantages of this approach is that they might have to pay the new ISP's installation costs, and you end up with two master sockets on the wall, however it would be the belt and braces (almost "bullet proof" way) to ensure the "cherished phone number" is kept AND with minimum downtime.

Just make sure that the new ISP and the Openreach installer are clear that you need an additional (i.e. second) connection, and it is NOT a takeover of the existing line.

Here is my experience using Andrews & Arnold:-
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/aaisp/f/4706680-aa...

My VoIP service through A&A has continued ever since. Initially via copper, now via A&A's FTTP

Cheers!

In reply to a post by purleigh:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

... what is the bullet proof way to ensure the cherished phone number is not lost and how to switch the FTTC service with the absolute minimum of down time to the new provider?

Given that the existing incoming landline cable to the house will already have at least two pairs of phone wires, your family member could order from the new ISP a new additional SOGEA installation - that would involve fitting a second master socket to the existing cable using a spare copper pair, without the need for a new cable being installed.

Once the new ISP's VDSL service was up and running, there would be almost zero downtime switching their broadband from the old BT service to the new ISP, and would avoid the slight chance hazard of the street cabinet not having any spare connections.

They could then port their BT phone number to their chosen VoIP provider, and in doing so ceasing the BT broadband in the process.
When I ported my phone number to VoIP, the downtime of having a working phone was about 30 minutes.

The disadvantages of this approach is that they might have to pay the new ISP's installation costs, and you end up with two master sockets on the wall, however it would be the belt and braces (almost "bullet proof" way) to ensure the "cherished phone number" is kept AND with minimum downtime.

Just make sure that the new ISP and the Openreach installer are clear that you need an additional (i.e. second) connection, and it is NOT a takeover of the existing line.

This was my initial thoughts. I do however have a gut feeling that BT would charge a termination fee to cease thir service. Is this an urban myth on my part?

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

This was my initial thoughts. I do however have a gut feeling that BT would charge a termination fee to cease thir service. Is this an urban myth on my part?

Not a myth; some service providers *do* charge a temination fee if you cease the service without transferring it to another provider. Aquiss do for example (£45.00). If you're with BT or another service provider you'll have to check the T&Cs of the contract you signed.

Who is the SOGEA provider you want to transfer to? If it's one that does digital voice (e.g. Sky, Zen, Vodafone) then you could transfer the FTTC+voice together (relatively low risk), wait until FTTP becomes available, then order FTTP, and then port the voice number to terminate the FTTC service.

Who is the voice provider you want to transfer to? If it's A&A then you could move your broadband and voice to them, and then migrate the broadband away whilst leaving the voice. I think they are clued up enough to be able to do that safely.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

This was my initial thoughts. I do however have a gut feeling that BT would charge a termination fee to cease thir service. Is this an urban myth on my part?

Not a myth; some service providers *do* charge a temination fee if you cease the service without transferring it to another provider. Aquiss do for example (£45.00). If you're with BT or another service provider you'll have to check the T&Cs of the contract you signed.

Who is the SOGEA provider you want to transfer to? If it's one that does digital voice (e.g. Sky, Zen, Vodafone) then you could transfer the FTTC+voice together (relatively low risk), wait until FTTP becomes available, then order FTTP, and then port the voice number to terminate the FTTC service.

Who is the voice provider you want to transfer to? If it's A&A then you could move your broadband and voice to them, and then migrate the broadband away whilst leaving the voice. I think they are clued up enough to be able to do that safely.

The very cheapest way forward, with a probable risk of loosing the cherished number, would be to transfer the broadband service to the selected ISP, Cloudscape, but this would automatically ceases the voice service. Perhaps only a few minutes of down time for the broadband service though while the routers are swapped over.

My understanding is that a PSTN number once ceased, can be recovered/ported up to 30 days of it dying. The selected provider being Voipfone. But as the number is with BT, my trust in that being successful is low. However there would be no loss of phone service with a service from Voipfone, all be it with a temporary line number. The temporary number is ditched in favour of the cherished number if the porting is successful.

If the cherished number is lost, then I am in the dog house for helping out.

The combination of these two new suppliers does give a substantial saving on the monthly outgoings made at present.

If you are switching from one FTTC provider to another and you want to preserve the old number then naturally it should be possible to switch to the new Digital Voice service and have the old phone number ported over.

In my case I was with TalkTalk old Analogue phone service, which at that time was under my dad's account. I switched to BT FTTC under my name and entered the phone number at checkout just over 2 years ago. The phone number was ported over and TalkTalk were naturally notified of the migration process, which happened from my dad's account to my account without any problems.

We now have the phone number under Digital Voice with BT for over 2 years. This happened without any downtime. There is no analogue phone service and connecting the phone to the telephone socket does not bring in any dial tone but works by connecting with the router. We also got the Alexa wireless phone free of charge.

I believe you should naturally be able to migrate on the same Openreach network without losing your phone number. But if you switch to an Altnet then things may be a littler trickier. You probably need to separately order the Altnet and then switch the phone to either an independent VOIP service or choose the phone service offered by the Altnet.

When you order a new FTTC service, during the signup it should give you the option to enter your existing phone number to port it over the new provider. I don't see why you should run into any problems.

So who is the driving force behind the change here ? , you or your relative, it often seems ( to me ) to be a relative , often a child ( adult child ) still living at home that decides that a change is required,

FWIW , looking at your choice of ISP ( and their prices ) I oay no more with BT than your relative would with them , although moving the telephony to a VoIP provider may have advantages in the future, should you decide that they need to move their broadband again, the telephony is unaffected, but once that cost is added to the ISP charges , if the objective is saving money there are cheaper ISP than the one you have selected for them.

Edited by Iniltous (Sun 03-Nov-24 09:54:46)

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

So who is the driving force behind the change here ? , you or your relative, it often seems ( to me ) to be a relative , often a child ( adult child ) still living at home that decides that a change is required,

FWIW , looking at your choice of ISP ( and their prices ) I oay no more with BT than your relative would with them , although moving the telephony to a VoIP provider may have advantages in the future, should you decide that they need to move their broadband again, the telephony is unaffected, but once that cost is added to the ISP charges , if the objective is saving money there are cheaper ISP than the one you have selected for them.

Does it mater who is pushing the button for change when there is a huge financial saving? The facts are that both new companies provide a good solid service with excellent support. The facts speak for themselves:

Over the last year the cost from BT by adding the 4 quarterly invoices together were:
Calls made: 202
Minutes Used: 312
Broadband and PSTN Rental: £806.28
Telephone Plan: £204.90 Unlimited Minutes each month
Total Cost: £1,011.18

Next March, the monthly cost rises by £3.00 * 2 that pushes up the yearly cost by £72.00

Using Cloudscape and Voipfone for the next 12 months:
Phone service charge: £100.80 £6 * 12 plus £2.40 * 12 for two ext numbers.
Telephone Plan: £0 100 minutes each month; enough for historical needs.
SOGEA 80:20: £360 FTTC from Cloudscape. £30 per month.
Total Cost: £460.80

No known price rises from Cloudscape or Voipfone during 2025.

It is true that there is also one off-hardware and installation costs. Allow £125 for that.

All facts verifiable from the respective web sites.

Your suggestions and costings would be interesting to see.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Over the last year the cost from BT by adding the 4 quarterly invoices together were:
Calls made: 202
Minutes Used: 312
Broadband and PSTN Rental: £806.28
Telephone Plan: £204.90 Unlimited Minutes each month
Total Cost: £1,011.18

They pay over £67 per month for FTTC?! That's just mad. Someone signed a contract for this (you talk about the price rises next March) so it there's nothing they can do about that until end of contract; no point in trying to buy themselves out now.

£17 per month for unlimited calls is pretty poor too.

Why 2 * £3 annual rise? Is this for PSTN rental + broadband rental separately, or is there a £3 increase on the voice calls package?

Either way, BT sold them a dog. Current offers from BT are more like £30 per month for FTTC (broadband + digital voice, with no separate line rental, although inclusive calls packages would be on top of that)

For 202 calls and 312 minutes used, you'd almost certainly be better off dropping the calls package. Even at 25p per call setup + 10p per minute (guessed figures), total cost would be only be £81.70 instead of £204.90. Just use your mobile for outgoing calls; plenty of SIM-only packages available at £5 per month package with unlimited calls and texts.

In short: wait for end of contract, then sign up with some decent provider at ~£30 per month. It's not necessary to throw VOIP into the mix at this point to get the savings, although it does give you more flexibility and a much wider choices of FTTC/FTTP providers, as well as isolating you from future loss-of-number problems when you migrate broadband again in future, and avoiding the baked-in £3 per month rises from the big providers.

My BT 80/20 FTTC with PAYG telephone is £33 , I could get Unlimited calls for £12 ( that would be £42 as I pay £3 for PAYG ,if I took Unlimited I would not pay £3 + £12 , just £12 ) but I don’t make outgoing calls so Unlimited would be a pointless expense ( but it was offered ) I don’t know what would be the better choice for your relative , so both figures quoted for a more accurate comparison.
FWIW, I also get Discovery+ included for the price ( via an App rather than BTTV ) so although your relative may be on some uncompetitive BT legacy package (and paying a premium for that privilege ) you chose to compare a unrepresentative BT price against your choice of ISP , using my real world price your stated saving would be much less impressive, plus I wasn’t even suggesting staying with BT with a renegotiated price , simply pointing out there are cheaper providers .

No doubt ( whatever your motivation is ) you have sold this as a £500+ saving , so worth the hassle, the reality would probably be a couple of ££ a month , but as I said , there are many similar posts on this forum that follow the same pattern, where concerned relatives are incredibly keen to get their ( presumably elderly and apparently unable to think for themselves relative, and , how patronising is that ) to switch , the implication is that these people are unable to make informed choices , and I dare say , in most of these cases , unrealistic savings are claimed , to make the case for switching , even if the relative encouraged to make the switch is risk averse.

Edited by Iniltous (Sun 03-Nov-24 19:53:59)

Yes candlerb that is indeed a silly price to pay, but fortunately that contract has finished with BT emailing the customer saying he could continue to pay that monthly fee if they so wished on a rolling monthly basis!

What this would mean is:
Broadband and PSTN Rental @ £69.74/month and
Unlimited Minutes Addon @ £17.72/month (01/02/03/07 numbers only).
When March comes around, both services rise by £3/month

Fortunately we are in a position to leave BT without penalty, providing the broadband service is not terminated. Perhaps by ordering from BT their Fibre 2 package at £31.99/month, under a new 24 month contract. There would also by no issues with the porting of the number into their Digital Voise service. I don't have to hand what the monthly BT "rental" with or without an anytime call package would be to add to the broadband price. As mention previously both services will increased by £3/month as from next March.

However BTs combined pricing is higher than that charged by Cloudscape (@ £30/month) and no doubt even lower from other ISPs.

Should FTTP become available during that contracted 24 month period, you would be inhibited in selected better deals from other ISPs without paying an early termination fee to BT.

The choice of Voipfone comes down to many other family members are already with that provider meaning advantage is taken of free calls between Voipfone subscribers. Then we can see that a paid call plan is unnecessary as for the £6/month Voipfone subscription you get 100 minutes free each month which is quite adequate in this case and it is also free to call 1471 whereas it is 35p with BT.

All the above is a win/win financial situation by giving BT the elbow. We are simply back to the original purpose of this thread of how best to ensure their is no failure in porting the PSTN number over to Voipfone AND the downtime of FTTC transfer to Cloudscape is of a very short duration. What is considered the best option to start the ball rolling?

Why are you intent on only providing the information that justifies your position and not all give all the information if your case is so compelling
, BT didn’t email saying that they could remain on the existing deal on an out of contract basis , they also made a renewal offer too , so to again quote that out if contact price and compare it to another providers in contract price is designed to do what ? , both prices ( for a call plan and broadband ) don’t both increase by £3 , my price increased by £3 , not £6 , yet I have both a calls plan and broadband, so if you were honest , you would accept that Cloudscape is cheaper by £2 not your wildly unrepresentative comparison,
1471 is free , to return the call after listening to the announcement by pressing 3 ( or whatever) may be charged, it depends on the plan , but given your argument that is your relative only calls other people who use the same VoIP provider to make the £6 fee worthwhile , why would they use 1471 for anything other to check who the last caller was .

Saving your relative a few quid may be worth the downtime, far be it from me to assume a few ££ is a negligible amount for everyone, , any apparently you have have decided ( on their behalf) that it’s in your relatives best interest to make the switch, , so good luck with it ,hopefully your number isn’t lost and the downtime between one ISP and another is minimal,

as far as the best way to approach this , that has already been addressed

Edited by Iniltous (Sun 03-Nov-24 21:35:00)

Actually, FYI I am on BT Home Essentials 2 for £20 a month. It is a social tariff broadband that I signed up when I was on Universal Credit. I took advantage of this offer following TalkTalk price hikes.

TalkTalk 80/20Mbps was originally £21.75 a month but gradually went up and up to £40 a month after the 24 month contract had ended. We didn't have any Altnets available yet. I was waiting for Community Fibre, following the wayleave agreement but the installation of the service in my building went live on the 3rd of December 2022.

I found out about BT Home Essentials 2 in July 2022 where I could pay £20 a month and have free Digital Voice service and at the same time being given a free Alexa Phone bundled with it. Phone calls are completely free on this package for both mobile and UK landline. The only thing you can't do with this is make international calls. Also, there are no price hikes or contract termination fees.

Anyway, I stuck with BT ever since as I have been so happy with their service that despite Community Fibre being live here and soon Virgin Media Nexfibre, I have still opted to remain with BT (at least for the time being).

Excellent reliability over 100 days of network connection up-time according to my router stats! Never had that sort of great service with TalkTalk.

This service is basically SOGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access) since the phone line is Digital Voice, if you plug the phone into the Analogue port of your master socket it will not return any dial tone. You have to either use the Alexa phone or plug the phone into your routers phone port.

Now the service for new Home Essentials 2 customers will be £23 a month. That's another reason I remained on this. The thing is, if I wasn't happy with BT, then I would've rushed over to join Community Fibre. But another reason I remained on BT is because on this service I can port forward whereas on Community Fibre it is behind CGNAT, which is only unrestricted under their 3Gbps package.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Should FTTP become available during that contracted 24 month period, you would be inhibited in selected better deals from other ISPs without paying an early termination fee to BT.

Although if it's *Openreach* FTTP that becomes available, BT will let you upgrade for free.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

The choice of Voipfone comes down to many other family members are already with that provider meaning advantage is taken of free calls between Voipfone subscribers. Then we can see that a paid call plan is unnecessary as for the £6/month Voipfone subscription you get 100 minutes free each month which is quite adequate in this case and it is also free to call 1471 whereas it is 35p with BT.

Aside: it's free to call 1471, but there is a 35p laziness charge if you press "3" to automatically return the call (i.e. if you can't be bothered to write down the number and dial it yourself)

Anyway, I have no argument with you choosing a new provider for both broadband and voice: you've worked out what you want, and how much it will save you, and chosen an solution optimised for cost.

The downsides are the risks involved of losing broadband service for a while, or losing the "cherished" number. Which is why *personally* I would wait until FTTP is available - which would allow you to order FTTP in parallel with your FTTC, and use the voice migration to cancel the FTTC. (That's how I did it). But of course, you want to do something now, because of the ridiculously high month charge currently being paid.

I would summarise your options as:

1. Recontract with BT for 24 months to get a better price, hope FTTP is available within that period, and migrate as I suggested above. Lowest risk, but not optimal cost.
2. Move the voice number to the VOIP provider. THIS WILL TERMINATE THE BROADBAND but pretty much guarantees you'll keep the number. Then immediately re-order broadband. This would work if you have another solution for temporary broadband access, like a 4G router or even phone tethering. And/or you could do it just before you go on holiday. (It's hard to judge the timing though; it typically takes a week to do a number port but is not guaranteed). Even though you're out of contract, there might be a broadband termination fee from BT; I am not with BT so you'll have to check.
3. Migrate the broadband to another provider who does not do voice. THIS WILL PUT THE PHONE NUMBER IN LIMBO. In theory you have 30 days to reclaim it, and various people have done it successfully, but there *is* a risk you might lose it. It avoids loss of broadband and any termination fee.

As with most things in life, there's a risk/reward equation and only you can judge what works best for you.

OP here with "what happened",

Did things in this order.

1) Placed a migration request with the chosen ISP.
2) With confirmation from the ISP of the switch over date, requested the VoIP provider to port the number into their system on the same date.
3) Received from BT two letters bemoaning the fact I was giving them the elbow.
4) At dawn on the requested date, both services were with their new providers.
5) Physically swapping out the BT router with a router of our choice was not a challenging task but frustrated in having a RJ12 socket on the router for the voice service. Just simply used the ex-BT cable.
6) Re-configured the printer with its new IP address
7) Re-configured all wireless devices with the new SSID and Password.
8) Likewise for the TV.

The total sum paid for the internet service plus the hosted voice service isn't a lot different from the offer on the table from BT, but there are some hardware costs to swallow. Savings come from lower call costs with neither new supplier with yearly price rises. The switch from PSTN to DV is one less thing to worry about in the future,

Just got to make sure that a closing balance from BT is really the last bill to be received from them and whether or not they want their router back.