Leaving BT broadband, landline and mobiles

[WithBellsOnThankYou]

Hi can anyone please advise the best steps and order to take them for leaving BT? I have landline, broadband and mobiles with BT (see below for details). I think changing my mobiles to a new provider will be my first step & hopefully that will be straightforward. I need to keep landline access with my present number so plan to change to a forwarding system (rather than a physical telephone) for that. Should I swop the landline to this new system before changing my broadband provider ? I don’t want anything I do to cancel my landline number,  stop my broadband or my mobile data whilst it’s all being sorted out. I need them all for hospital communications and work. The new broadband will be plusnet full fibre. 

I’ve always been with BT for landline (now digital, with My Anytime calls although I don’t remember asking for that) and then broadband (currently Fibre with Halo 1 but soon to be full fibre according to their latest update). We have 2 out of contract BT mobile plans one 4GB & the other 5GB. I’ve had other priorities so this has chugged along for years, gathering costs as it went. Our last bill was £125.09. We should be able to get it all from various providers plus much better speed, data etc for £65pm. Can anyone help me deal with the steps I should or shouldn’t take ? Thank you.

[imjolly · Accepted solution]

are you still in contract with BT for phone and broadband package?  if so there will early termination penalties

as Plusnet no longer provide phone service you need to move phone to a separate provider for VOIP and to keep number you are better doing that first then sort out your broadband.  moving phone to a new VOIP provider will terminate your current BT contract

[Jane2018]

This is fairly similar to me other than I never had a mobile via BT. No one will think my way was good but worked for me and gave me huge comfort over the landline number that was my key thing to keep. I kept BT broadband and bought Community Fibre broadband  fibre to the premises and had both working side by side for  a month until I was happy.  

Stage 2 I ported my landline number to Voipfone £6 a month for up to 100 minutes of calls a month. I had to buy a device you plug into your modem from Voipfone which was fine as it was a one off cost. They not you tell BT you are porting the landline and then you just wait. BT then tell you the porting day and that they will cancel your broadband and landline. Goodness knows why BT wants to lose broadband customers by doing it this way but it made it dead easy for me to cancel everything with BT as I didn't even have to tell BT - Voipfone told them. The porting was much faster than I thought - about 5 working days I think.  The morning of the change I moved my landline plug plugging into the voipfone device which is plugged into my community fibre router and the BT modem went dead. I then had an email from BT about where to post back the Hub2. I am quite glad my broadband and landline number are with different companies now as I feel less depending on one. My landline had already moved over to digital voice like yours has already.

I was out of contract. As someone else mentions if you are still in contract there will be extra charges to cancel early.

So far so good - BT cannot give us FTTP so CF does and that is fast and working well. The landline has not had any problems so far and even things like picking up voicemail can be done simialrly to with BT although I also get an email too for voicemail which I find is quite a helpful service. I have never gone over the included 100 minutes so all I pay is the £6 a month and separately the monthly charge for the Community Fibre broadband.

[iniltous]

You don’t say how your current broadband is delivered, I’ll assume it’s FTTC , if you can  , arrange a FTTP installation with Plusnet that is completely independent of your FTTC service,  you get that installed first ( this may not necessarily be straightforward as the usual order journey would include the cessation of your existing service , you will  need to confirm with PN that FTTP is not linked to anything else , so you definitely want to avoid OTS , one touch switching as you wouldn’t be switching) , if that’s successful you then arrange the port of your phone number to whoever it is you want to use for VoIP telephony , this action raises a cease on your BT broadband and phone service , not your mobile .

Without getting FTTP installed independently you would have to accept no broadband for a while , if the maintenance of your phone number is paramount , the porting of the number will doubtless cause the cessation of the linked FTTC broadband service but is the best chance of your number not disappearing into the ether .