Ditch landline for 4G - porting the number?

[Escapegoat]

I pay £10/month for a basic SIM-only with Vodafone, and another £33/month for a landline+broadband with Plusnet. The latter is terrible - very slow at about 1MB/s at best - and there's no real prospect of it improving any time soon (semi-rural location, and this particular cabinet was missed/skipped).

I've checked with USB tethering to the laptop and the 4G performance is fine - a huge jump over broadband. So I'm ready to cancel the landline contract and upgrade the SIM-only deal to include more data - looks like I can get 40GB for about £30 +/-.

But... what are the practicalities of forwarding/retaining the company's existing landline number? It would be nice if it was totally transparent to everyone (i.e. so they only see the old landline number and not the actual mobile number).

Ideas/advice?

[OMITN]

You’re going to have to pay someone for a fixed line connection. The phone number attaches to it (presumably geographic - ie it has an area code). Mobile numbers are all 07.

So the answer is to find a super cheap phone only deal that doesn’t cost the earth to forward to you.

Or switch to a non-geographic number and see if there’s a way of having it virtually attached to you and then forwarding to your mobile number.

[Slushbox]

See the Three 4G Home Broadband thread.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

You can ditch the landline and the rental. SIP/VOIP will give you a landline number, (tied to the handset, not the line) and you can port your old number over, with provisos.

Existing landline numbers can be 'probably' be ported to a SIP/VOIP provider, for about £30. It does depend on the existing provider playing ball and takes about three weeks for authorisation and some form filling. There's no need for a fixed line.

Any of the SIP/VOIP phone providers can advise, the low risk option is to go with a PAYG provider like Sipgate Basic, set up a basic account, get it authorised (by mail), select a suitable 'local' (or not) temporary number, add a tenner, and then go through the porting process. While this happens you can test the service, sort out handsets and router config etc.

Once the number is ported it might be hard to return it to a fixed landline.

The SIP account can display any caller line ident number on the recipient's handset, it's usual to set the CLI to the SIP 'landline' number, as that will handle voice-mail if needed. Call forwarding to mobile is transparent, you'll pay the going call rate.

https://basichelp.sipgate.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/...

Edited by Slushbox on Saturday 29th June 18:48

[silentbrown]

Slushbox said:

You can ditch the landline and the rental. SIP/VOIP will give you a landline number, (tied to the handset, not the line) and you can port your old number over, with provisos.

Did exactly this with porting a BT number to VOIP with Nimvelo a few years back. No regrets. When we moved house (taking the "office" with me) the company phone number was unchanged, even though we're nowhere near the original exchange.

Landline to VOIP number porting seems to be bit of an exception. AFAIK you can't port them back, you can't port from landline to mobile, and I don't think you can port mobile to VOIP either...?

[Slushbox]

silentbrown said:

Did exactly this with porting a BT number to VOIP with Nimvelo a few years back. No regrets. When we moved house (taking the "office" with me) the company phone number was unchanged, even though we're nowhere near the original exchange.

Landline to VOIP number porting seems to be bit of an exception. AFAIK you can't port them back, you can't port from landline to mo
The desktop VOIP phones also have a stack of inbuilt smarts like blind/attended transfers, one button voicemail, call forwards on busy/unanswered, etc. bile, and I don't think you can port mobile to VOIP either...?

Think that's right. Once allocated to VOIP, the number stays there.

Our two old landline numbers are now with Sipgate Basic, which was the best move ever. One desktop phone with two SIP accounts now handles them both, and saves 2 x £17 a month line rental. (We just put in a second handset on the main number.)

Should we move, we just take the phones with us. :-)

We are on 4G mobile broadband so the only monthly fees are £22 a month, plus outgoing calls.

(We also had good service from Soho66 but long-term preferred the free PAYG options in Sipgate Basic for a small office.

[Tyre Smoke]

Once the number is with a VOIP provider (we are with BT) it can be ported to another VOIP provider? Just not back to a landline?

[Slushbox]

Tyre Smoke said:

Once the number is with a VOIP provider (we are with BT) it can be ported to another VOIP provider? Just not back to a landline?

Think it's a question for the 'loosing' provider and the 'gaining' one.

There's a lot of of discussion on the BT forums about exactly what schemes BT VOIP numbers were under, and whether they could be ported. The consensus seems to be 'nobody really knows.'

There are a couple of discussions where the 'gaining' provider says no problem, but BT refuse to transfer.

Porting a VOIP-transferred number back to BT also seems impossible.

There's also the question that if you do port a number, will the 'gaining' VOIP provider still be in business in ten years time?

https://community.bt.com/t5/Landline/Porting-a-VOI...