BT disconnected my landline by mistake

[Badger22]

I arranged to cancel my broadband and retain my landline-  but BT have disconnected my landline too.

Does anyone know how I can get it reconnected without signing up for a whole new service?

It seems impossible to get through to anyone at BT to correct this.

[Keith_Beddoe · Accepted solution]

@Badger22 

Its not possible to do that as there is no longer an exchange based phone service, its now carried over the broadband connection. and uses BT Digital Voice.

You would have to start a new service for just a phone only. You would be provided with a BT Smart hub 2 which has a phone socket on the back. There would be no Internet access as it would only carry the phone service.

You would most likely be issued with a new number, but may be able to request your old number back, once the service is active. That would need to be done within 28 days.

[Keith_Beddoe]

https://www.bt.com/landline/deals

https://www.bt.com/help/landline/getting-set-up/how-can-i-order-a-new-bt-phone-line-

[iniltous]

If you manage to do this , ( get  a phone service only reinstalled, without the broadband  ) and as stated it’s not a simple thing to do , because your previous phone/broadband was a package and priced as a package , you can’t simply remove one part , and expect the other part to remain, hence you losing both services even if you only wanted one service removed .
Hopefully you aren’t that naive to  expect that if your broadband and telephone together were around £35 , and the phone ‘service’  had an arbitrary charge of £5 , then removing the broadband will leave a £5 charge for telephony only , it doesn’t work like that.

Interestingly the ‘question’ a few years ago was the exact opposite, ‘why can’t I remove the phone and only have broadband ‘, how times have changed.

Should you get a BT phone only service reordered and supplied , expect to pay around £30 for it , that may ‘influence’ wether you try and get a phone service without broadband reinstalled , if the saving is so small .

I dare say you still have broadband, just not from BT and possibly not on Openreach, if the new broadband doesn’t offer telephony and you need it , you probably should have asked them some questions before now .

[Badger22]

Thanks for the reply - actually I did have a separate package and was paying considerably more for a fibre broadband service. When I called to cancel the broadband I checked to make sure that the landline would not be affected. I am sure what I was told was well-intended, just does not seem to be accurate. I was not trying to save money by making the change, my BT broadband was just not very reliable so I now have fibre all the way into my house from someone else. Thanks again,

[Badger22]

Thank you Keith, I guess that's what I will do.

[chrisjp]

"When I called to cancel the broadband I checked to make sure that the landline would not be affected."

Unfortunately it seems you can seldom rely on what you're told by BT's telephone agents

[jac_95]

@Badger22 

If you have full fibre from another provider it might be a better and possible cheaper option to get a third party VoIP service and see if you can port your old number to it (porting request usually needs to be made within 30 days of previous phone service ending)

A third party VoIP service can be used in conjunction with most broadband services and providers.

Otherwise what could happen is if you ask BT to reinstate the home voice service which requires a broadband connection it may trigger your current broadband service provider to close that broadband service too (as with the one touch switch process the gaining service provider notifies and triggers a termination process with your existing provider - https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/switching-provider/simpler-broadband-switching-is-here... )