Originally Posted by
alfalpha
Soon changing ISP and will get rid of the landline but would like to keep the landline number through VOIP on the off chance of incoming calls. Can I tap the collective knowledge base please for any hardware required as well as software/ service provider?
Thanks in anticipation.
Alf
I recently went through the same thing, changing ISP and ditching land line but actually decided against VOIP number transfer. Like you, have had the existing land line number for a number of years [more than 25] so thought long and hard about keeping it but came to the conclusion, that although I could keep the same number on a VOIP system, it would cost about an extra £10-£15 a month. Then I looked at what our actual land line usage was and it was primarily my wife who used the land line to keep in touch with her elderly parents who live in another part of the UK. This 'problem' was solved by getting her a £5 a month unlimited minutes mobile SIM card, so that wasn't an issue any longer. If her parents need to ring her in an emergency they phone her mobile and then hang up an she rings them.
The vast majority of land line calls we were getting in recent years were either out and out scams...'Hello Sir, this is Microsoft here' or marketing calls...'You need extra insulation' etc etc as anyone we do know has long since been contacting us via mobile calls/texts/whatsAPP, so in the end we actually ditched our land line and our old number as the cost savings for just having a fibre broadband ISP were considerable and no more nuisance calls. To highlight how long some of these marketing firms hold onto details, we regularly used to get calls for the previous owners of the house, who had emigrated to Canada more than 25 years ago! It always used to amuse me when they were asked for as I used to reply, 'Do you want their number in Canada?'
One final thing, which I'm sure you know, is that one of the main reasons for a land line in the past was for emergencies as that worked even if you lost power to your property. That obviously is no longer the case with a VOIP system as a power failure in the house means no broad band and no VOIP.