VOIP

[Spees]

PSTN ceases in January 2027 and I will need to find a way of connecting my landline phone to VOIP.  BT say that I will not have fibre to the premises by then, so my FTTC will continue and I am happy with the 50 Mbps broadband. I use less than 500 minutes of anytime calls per month to UK landlines and mobiles. Am I better to buy broadband and VOIP separately, or a combined deal? At present my broadband including anytime calls costs me £34 per month and VOIP is said to be cheaper than PSTN.

If I buy separately, how do I go about it, keeping my phone number.

[imjolly]

If you have broadband and phone from BT and are currently on FTTC then you will not have a problem as digital voice (VOIP) will be provided over your existing connection just you need to connect phone to the phone socket on your BT router instead of the current wall socket connection nothing else will change and keep same phone number and call package

[WSH]

Your choices are a broadband service which includes a phone service, like BT and Digital Voice or Sky and Talk etc.  Those will run quite happily over copper FTTC.  They do not necessarily need fibre.  50Mb/s will be perfectly adequate speed-wise.  The cheapest option there is usually Pay As You Go.  I’d start by taking a look at what offers are available to you in MyBT.

Alternatively, you could just take a broadband only package and then sign up with a third-party VoIP provider, like A&A for example.

You can request that the new phone service provide ‘port the number’ across from your old provider.

[iniltous]

You don’t need to be using FTTP for migration to DV , if you are on BT FTTC and haven’t yet been migrated to DV , so your phone is still connected to the wall socket rather than the router then before Jan 2027 you will be invited to connect your phone to the router and start using DV rather than PSTN , it’s a little weird that you haven’t already been required to do this .

The rest of your post regarding is it better to buy your telephone from a third party VoIP provider is  something you need to establish yourself, FWIW , £34 for Unlimited Minutes and F1 broadband (presumably what you mean by 50Mb ) is cheaper than I pay for broadband and PAYG telephony, if you assign a £12 value to the Unlimited Minutes ( Anytime Calls  is the name of a calls package no longer sold and you for some reason mention 500 minutes which is also a call plan no longer sold ) then your broadband has arguably has a cost of £22 ,which is pretty good.

Can you get Unlimited Minutes or a limited minutes call plan , like 1000 minutes that will be more than sufficient for you needs from a VoIP provider for less than £12 , you may but you also may be surprised by how little the difference is , plus your  £22 broadband may be difficult to match .

If you do decide to go separately for VoIP telephony with a third party and broadband only from someone ( BT or anyone else ) , you advise the VoIP provider to port your number , they arrange to take your number into their organisation, this kills your FTTC broadband, which you then reorder as broadband only , so you have a break in broadband service, unless your choice of broadband includes alternatives to Openreach , in which case you get their broadband only service installed first , before you start the number port to VoIP so you maintain broadband access even if it means paying for two services simultaneously for a month or so  .

Anecdotally it seems you may have a week to 10 days  without telephony that seems to be the typical gap  between BT stopping your phone and the VoIP provider starting delivering telephony although there is no reason why there should be anything more than a few hours downtime, from what  I’ve read from others that have done this type of change , a week or so seems typically to be the case .