who needs a landline anyway?

Your current situation may look something like this… you have broadband, probably fibre, and you’re paying for a package that includes a landline where there may not be a phone plugged in, and you probably don’t know what your home phone number is! Sound familiar?

According to Uswitch data, “the number of households with a landline has fallen by 4 million since 2000” and “4 in 5 homes have a landline, but more than a quarter don’t have a handset attached.” All just going to show that our digital world is consuming more and more analogue technologies.

Historically, when buying broadband, it has been compulsory to bundle in line rental. But with the majority of us using our mobile phones, and the dawn of 100% internet-based calls, why do we need to pay for line rental? And do we really need it?

how can I have broadband without a phone line?

Currently, most broadband providers use BT’s Openreach network to bring the internet to our homes, via copper cabling. Similarly with fibre broadband; the fibre cables run to the green cabinet in your street, but finish its journey through BT’s copper cables to your home. Which means the connection is never 100% fibre.

Line rental is tied into your current broadband contract, as your provider needs to incorporate the fees for using BT’s lines to deliver your broadband, as well as for you to use it for a phone line.

But what if you don’t need line rental as you don’t use a landline? And you don’t want part-fibre or ADSL (copper) internet?

You’ll need a full-fibre broadband provider, like toob to move you away from copper lines and on to 100% fibre broadband. Full-fibre is separate from the phone network and uses its own fibre optic network to bring faster speeds, better reliability and lower latency (ping), all directly to your home. Full-fibre is a superior technology which is produced intentionally for data transmission, which copper networks were never designed for.

why choose broadband without a phone line?

Choosing full-fibre which is a ‘broadband only’ option, will increase your broadband speed dramatically, giving your home the speed and bandwidth it needs to cope with modern daily life; whether you’re gaming, streaming, using smart devices, surfing, working from home, and so much more. Along with this, other benefits include:

saving money on your broadband bills

• toob’s full-fibre costs just £25 per month, meaning you can hang up the phone on BT’s copper network and benefit from no line rental or additional charges.

reliability

• toob’s full-fibre speeds average near-gigabit at 900 Mbps for both download and upload; thus making your internet experience more streamlined, and more reliable, no matter how many people at home are online at the same time.

less maintenance and interference

• This is caused by old copper phone lines that slow your internet down.

In regards to phone calls, the majority of us are using our mobile phones now, as well as internet-based apps. But there are other options for you, if you want full-fibre but still keen to keep a landline…

what are the alternatives to a landline?

A BBC survey has revealed that: “40% of us in the UK have stopped using a landline altogether.” Most of us are now using our mobile phones for all calls, however moving away from landlines is still causing some concern. This is mainly among the older generation who maybe aren’t quite as tech-savvy or own a mobile device.

The great news is, that toob is a broadband-only supplier, and we help customers who would like to keep their landline through a VOIP service. VOIP stands for ‘Voice Over IP’ which although sounds scary, basically means a ‘digital home phone.’

VOIP services function as a phone line over your broadband connection, so instead of plugging your phone handset into your wall and connecting it to the phone line, you just connect it to the back of your router instead. It’s that simple.

The benefits of using a VOIP service over traditional landline, include:

• A clearer connection for crystal-clear calls and zero crackly phone lines
• At approx. £10.25, its cheaper than the average line rental cost (£18.99) whilst also including a call package!
• You can keep your landline number
• No more timed calls so you don’t have to hang up at the 59^th minute! Spend as long as you like on the phone to your friends and family

You can take it one step further and download an extension app to your mobile phone, where you can answer your ‘landline’ calls on your mobile, wherever you are!

There are a variety of different VOIP providers, such as Sipgate and Virtual Landline.

toob customer Matthew Sleap and his wife have recently joined toob and moved their landline to a VOIP service through Vonage: “It’s Fantastic! It’s a great thing. I don’t even have to stand up to answer the phone, we can just pick up any of the calls on our mobile!”