Thinking of getting rid of the landline, pros and cons.

[harrycatcat1]

Thinking out loud.

I pay £36 for our landline, unlimited calls and unlimited data do dah thing.

My wife and I have sim only deals for mobiles £7.50 for unlimited calls and texts with a certain amount of data which I can't remember or understand. 

So the landline is costing £400+ per year and only a few folk call us on it but I do use the WiFi connection for browsing the tinternet mainly and my Amazon stick a couple of hours in winter watching films or still game 🤣 during dark nights 🌙 

What I'm thinking is increase the amount of data on the mobiles and sack the landline. The problem is how much data do i need? How do you calculate it 🤔 I know its how long is a piece of string but do you just guess? Surely someone should know?

How much data does looking at pigeon watch use in an hour🤔

How much data does watching a film or a football match use on the amazon stick for an hour?

I haven't a clue 😕 

Thanks for reading the ramblings.

 

 

[Dave-G]

I'll be watching this. I dumped the home phone but kept the line for tinternet.

I too don't know about data stuff but we don't use our similar price sim only mobiles for anything online.

[TOPGUN749]

If you don’t make or receive calls on it and it’s that much,I would cancel it,provided you have enough data on your mobile contract and don’t use a laptop etc. I pay £22 for my landline/ internet,but do use other devices with it.You could negotiate a lower price by stopping the anytime calls that could save £150 a year maybe.

As for a mobile 10Gb a month of data is quite a lot and sufficient for many people .

Edited July 23, 2023 by TOPGUN749

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, I do not use a home phone, internet and mobile , saves nuisance calls to 👍

[ditchman]

i pay £10/mth for 30GB of data......it does me for shopping watching forums and u-tube shooting.........i dont have an i-phone just a cheap nokia £14.75 (new) and spend maybe 10 quid a mth on that max...(charge the nokia once every 3 weeks)

 

[old'un]

Data is something you use when browsing the internet on your mobile phone, you can get a sim and hub to do the same as a land line but you need good 4g or better 5g coverage.

What are you browsing the internet on? Mobile or computer?

You could drop the phone and just have broadband only for the fire-stick and the internet.

[strimmer_13]

32 minutes ago, TOPGUN749 said:

 

As for a mobile 10mbs a month of data is quite a lot and sufficient for many people .

10mbs is about a 3 1/2 minute song on the radio. 

10gb would get you about 1 '4k' film I reckon. 

I ditched the landline and went talktalk fiber which worked out a lot cheaper. Excellent in fact. 

My mobile is 'smarty' @ £10 per month which gives me free calls, free texts and 60gb of data. 

I've been looking into my dad's as he wants rid of it all, wants a smart TV but no lines. Data usage would be high. So smarty would do £18 unlimited everything, then I'd have to set up his phone as a portable hotspot so his firestick picks that up and uses his phone data. He's in a area with a good signal, but he's running 4g, and I doubt you'd run 4k TV just off a hotspot from a phone. I'll have to test it 

 

[TOPGUN749]

1 Gb gives about 12 hours browsing I am told,so if you have 10 a month it’s approx 4 hours a day.Having broadband Internet the home usually means a landline comes with it as standard whether you connect a phone to it or not.Mine is connected but rarely get a call,it’s chargeable calls on mine so use the free minutes on mobile.

Edited July 23, 2023 by TOPGUN749

[humperdingle]

Haven’t had a landline for years - we have just broadband and mobile devices. Think it saves about £15 per month or so not having the landline.

[Newbie to this]

I'd look at who is providing internet without a landline connection in your area. 

Like strimmer_13 has said, someone like talktalk who provide fibre to the premises, so no landline is required.

We use Virgin, but it is still fibre to the cabinet, and comes into the house on a coax (but in some areas it will be FTP), so still no landline and no rental.

We are getting about 260mb speed and unlimited data, I would not have broadband that wasn't unlimited if streaming TV and films etc.

[Genghis]

I think the only relevant question is, does anyone call you on your landline that might otherwise lose touch with you if they couldn’t?

 

I’ve not had a landline in about 12 years. Only people who ever called it were people that I wouldn’t want to speak to (sales calls, scam calls, etc). At the time I used to work nights, so bringing awoken by some clown from Virgin trying to sell me a new deal was not a pleasant experience.

 

[Digger79]

We changed to Bt Home Essentials Package, Unlimited Broadband + Digital Home phone £20 a month. 

Edit we don't use Home phone so can't say if price changes when making calls

Edited July 23, 2023 by Digger79

[harrycatcat1]

I think if I have broadband at home I won't be saving that much as you will still have to pay for the landline, won't I?

I am going to go to the tesco phone shop and get some prices on data on my phone, then get them to show me how to connect the amazon stick to my phone and see if it works because I don't have a clue about 3g 4g or 5g nor mb or gb.

Ideally I would like to pay an extra £15 a month for data on my sim only and I would be £21 a month better off and not have scammers ringing the landline.

Technology does my head in, even though I like it but just can't understand it 😕 

[old'un]

1 hour ago, harrycatcat1 said:

I think if I have broadband at home I won't be saving that much as you will still have to pay for the landline, won't I?

I am going to go to the tesco phone shop and get some prices on data on my phone, then get them to show me how to connect the amazon stick to my phone and see if it works because I don't have a clue about 3g 4g or 5g nor mb or gb.

Ideally I would like to pay an extra £15 a month for data on my sim only and I would be £21 a month better off and not have scammers ringing the landline.

Technology does my head in, even though I like it but just can't understand it 😕 

there you go..https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/tethering-use-mobile-internet-pc/

[harrycatcat1]

1 hour ago, old'un said:

there you go..https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/tethering-use-mobile-internet-pc/

Thanks I will have a look at that when my brain is not so tired 😉😉😉👍👍👍

[JKD]

Watching this thread with interest, as I'm of the same mind, and also confused and ignorant in such things 😖😆

[Miserableolgit]

We dropped our BT landline and broadband a few months ago mainly due to living out in the hinterlands between villages we are a few miles from the nearest exchange and the service to our property was via ancient copper cable that only gave us dire broadband speeds with no prospect of fibre cable in the near future. Add to that we hardly received or made landline calls so we've gone mobile only and for broadband bought a sim based router and use a GiffGaff sim which gives us unlimited data for around £30. We have reasonable line of sight to the closest  02 antenna mounted on the local water tower and that combination usually provides us with a substantially faster broadband service compared to the old BT service via copper cable that was provided via literally decades old copper cabling, poles, junction boxes etc.

[Bigbob]

We have a landline you need one for sky box office but i cant remember the last time it was used 

[udderlyoffroad]

18 hours ago, harrycatcat1 said:

I think if I have broadband at home I won't be saving that much as you will still have to pay for the landline, won't I?

Not necessarily.  Plenty of ISPs do Broadband only, or at the very least charge you a nominal landline rental fee, and you just unplug your phone. 

I only had a landline because it actually worked out cheaper to have one with broadband from Shell energy than go with an landline-less contract with a.n. other provider.  Never even plugged the phone in. 

18 hours ago, harrycatcat1 said:

I am going to go to the tesco phone shop and get some prices on data on my phone, then get them to show me how to connect the amazon stick to my phone and see if it works because I don't have a clue about 3g 4g or 5g nor mb or gb.

It's an utter faff in my experience and kills your battery on your mobile phone.  I have done it with my laptop when I needed to work somewhere, but isn't to be recommended.

I suggest you do 2 things

1) Turn the wifi off on your mobile and see what the data rate is like in your house, and I mean in all rooms.  If that's ok, then try to pair your firestick and watch a movie.  See how good the experience is.

2) Talk to your ISP, tell them you're thinking of leaving and see what deal they'll do you.

A wired connection  to your house will almost always be preferable to mobile data, unless you live quite rurally like say @Miserableolgit

 

[harrycatcat1]

13 minutes ago, udderlyoffroad said:

Not necessarily.  Plenty of ISPs do Broadband only, or at the very least charge you a nominal landline rental fee, and you just unplug your phone. 

I only had a landline because it actually worked out cheaper to have one with broadband from Shell energy than go with an landline-less contract with a.n. other provider.  Never even plugged the phone in. 

It's an utter faff in my experience and kills your battery on your mobile phone.  I have done it with my laptop when I needed to work somewhere, but isn't to be recommended.

I suggest you do 2 things

1) Turn the wifi off on your mobile and see what the data rate is like in your house, and I mean in all rooms.  If that's ok, then try to pair your firestick and watch a movie.  See how good the experience is.

2) Talk to your ISP, tell them you're thinking of leaving and see what deal they'll do you.

A wired connection  to your house will almost always be preferable to mobile data, unless you live quite rurally like say @Miserableolgit

 

Good advice, I'm going to try and pair my phone to the firestick later to see if it works ok 👍 

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, I have broadband only with shell, less than £20 a month

[Blackpowder]

After I retired from self employment I only seemed to be getting nuisance calls on the landline so dumped it about 3 years ago.  There was some trouble keeping my internet connection but all  well once that was sorted.   Strange thing is in our local directory I am still listed under a new number wqich when I tried ringing brought no answer or result.   Does anyone know if it is possible to have your mobile number listed in BT directory?

 

Blackpowder

 

 

[discobob]

Just one thing to bear in mind - it can go against you on a credit check if you don't have a landline....

[udderlyoffroad]

1 hour ago, Blackpowder said:

After I retired from self employment I only seemed to be getting nuisance calls on the landline so dumped it about 3 years ago.  There was some trouble keeping my internet connection but all  well once that was sorted.   Strange thing is in our local directory I am still listed under a new number wqich when I tried ringing brought no answer or result.   Does anyone know if it is possible to have your mobile number listed in BT directory?

So let me see if I've got this straight; you ditched your landline due to nuisance calls, but you want your number to be publicly listed?

 

9 minutes ago, discobob said:

Just one thing to bear in mind - it can go against you on a credit check if you don't have a landline....

My google fu is coming up a negative on that one, or at least no information from this decade.  Short answer to that one is, if a business thinks me still having an unnecessary expense makes me a worse credit risk, then I don't particularly want to do business with them anyway.

[discobob]

7 minutes ago, udderlyoffroad said:

My google fu is coming up a negative on that one, or at least no information from this decade.  Short answer to that one is, if a business thinks me still having an unnecessary expense makes me a worse credit risk, then I don't particularly want to do business with them anyway.

You may be right - I am thinking back - when trying to build a credit score after being in the forces and overseas....