B****y BT

[joinerman]

Had out BT bill today, call usage £14.40 total bill with line rental & vat £149.11, if only i could do without a landline, that doesn't include broadband that comes in a separate bill.

 

[Shayne]

I no that feeling mate i pulled the plug on our phone about 8 years ago because the mrs works nights and i'm of the opinion if someone tries to sell me something without me first showing an interest then i obviously don't want whatever it is , so 20 odd quid a month pays for broadband and nothing else which seems reasonable enough . Or at least it would if it didn't drop connection every time someone went to the toilet in London .

 

[Crispin]

That's a bit of a stinker.

If you can find an option which does not include a landline then you can use a company like soho66 (www.soho66.co.uk)
I've used them for a number of years now and the "rental" costs £2.50 a month.
You need an IP phone but those are cheap too - http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f....H0.Xvoip+phone.TRS0&_nkw=voip+phone&_sacat=0

Depending on your internet usage then a "mobile" plan may be an option too. Someone like giffgaff have a £20 for "unlimited" internet which is not bad if you're a light to medium user.

 

[Pumpy]

with EE my line rental is 17.50 per month, internet/phone package is 24.95pm for 20MB and free calls so the bill never exceeds 42.45pm

 

[Philip A]

Trying to understand...

In the UK you can't just buy a phone, stick a prepaid SIM in it, and go about your business?

Why do you need a landline?

For info, here everybody and his goat has two or three lines, and a SIM costs $1.00. Internet packages are "on the go" with prepay on your phone or with a USB router for computers, international calls come to roughly 20 US cents a minute, unlimited Internet from $40.00 per month, and so on. You can transfer money with your phone account (phone company's system, not bank) to someone else's phone, use it to pay utility bills, the grocery store, even the lady who helped you with the drinks last night.

We get 3G internet out in the bush... and you can load 50Mbs for $0.30 if you're broke.

From the sound of things, the 21st Century arrived here before even considering going your way...

 

[Crispin]

with EE my line rental is 17.50 per month, internet/phone package is 24.95pm for 20MB and free calls so the bill never exceeds 42.45pm

Respectfully - is that a bit high?
On mobile -
I've just moved to giffgaff. £10 a month for 2GB of data. If I wanted to splashout and get 4GB then it's £12 a month.

On landline: Free line with Virgin media ( I questioned them on why I should pay for a landline when I don't need or use one. They agreed and said they would not charge me)
£38 a month for 200Mb/s internet connection.

Tell them you no longer need the line and see if they will reduce / remove the cost.

Why do you need a landline?

If you want normal internet then the likes of BT et al "need" you to pay for the line into your house. It's a massive rip-off and profit turner for them.

For the average home-user and internet, people don't really think of 3G/4G which is a perfectly do-able solution. Like you say, either get a USB dongle, old secondhand phone or one of these.

 

[Rob Cowell]

Trying to understand...

In the UK you can't just buy a phone, stick a prepaid SIM in it, and go about your business?

Why do you need a landline?

Depends on your geography. I live in a lowly populated, hilly / mountainous region. 3G/4G signals struggle, and I certainly don't get them in my house constructed from thick stone walls. The valley I live in is on the cusp of blocking the TV satellite and does block terrestrial signals. No Virgin cable anywhere near me. BT landline phone and broadband is extremely useful. I appreciate I'm a bit of an edge case.

 

[frank rabbets]

You don't have to be on the edge to get poor service. I'm 2 miles from Stourbridge but phone line goes across woods and fields to a distant exchange. Broadband is 1.4 Mbs ish. Mobile phone signal is poor. Some thieves stole 0.7 Km of the main phone strand and we were off for 5 months. A dongle worked but only when outside the house.

 

[Rob Cowell]

You don't have to be on the edge to get poor service. I'm 2 miles from Stourbridge but phone line goes across woods and fields to a distant exchange. Broadband is 1.4 Mbs ish. Mobile phone signal is poor. Some thieves stole 0.7 Km of the main phone strand and we were off for 5 months. A dongle worked but only when outside the house.

I don't get poor service. I get a very reliable 50 (fifty) Mbps or greater download speed. My line goes across woods and fields but the exchange is less than 3 miles away, and I don't think there are many spurs off my line before it gets to the exchange. My service interruptions have historically been caused by trees falling on the line.

I can appreciate how painful poor landline performance combined with poor mobile must be.

 

[Pumpy]

Respectfully - is that a bit high?

Possibly, we can't get a reliable mobile signal at the house, we can't get a TV picture either, so we need a hardline, 20MB is the most we can get on the poor infrastucture as we're out in the boonies. Wife spends half her life on the phone at no extra cost.

If there's a cheaper hardline solution with free calls and 20MB I'm all ears.

 

[Crispin]

Do you get a decent signal outside the house / upstairs by a window on either side of house? If so then you could try a 4g WiFi router like above and see if it works. If not then you can return it and lost nothing other than postage.

Not saying it will - saying stuff like this is just another option.


C

 

[Pumpy]

Do you get a decent signal outside the house / upstairs by a window on either side of house?

Not really, nearest I can get reliable 3g is about 100M from the house, we're at the bottom of a valley surrounded by trees.

on the plus side, I use PAYG mobile, I've only put £40 on it in the last 3 years, and I still have £18 credit

I did think about putting a large mast up, maybe one day when the building is renovated.

 

[frank rabbets]

Crispin excuse my complete ignorance on this but can I give a 4G wireless router a try ? Which model shall I buy ? Is there just one off payment or a monthly cost ?

 

[AndyCook]

Do these wifi 3G/4g routers have a SIM card slot in them ? To enable connection to phone network ?

 

[GeekOKent]

I have no idea what you crazy people are on about. At least you have fresh air, greens around and sound of sheep. I live in London. Our BT line is good for about 3mbps on the 5 dry sunny days we get every year. Rest of the time we get 2.5mbps or so.

4G has helped recently with pricess becoming affordable. But we still pay about £30/month to get 100GB of data through. And there is a contention problem. As more people get on, will the cell providers keep increasing capacity at the tower to keep up?

 

[GeekOKent]

Do these wifi 3G/4g routers have a SIM card slot in them ? To enable connection to phone network ?

Yes they do. The better ones atleast do. Many of the more commodity ones have a usb port the you plug a usb-4g dingle dangle dongle into.

The better ones also typically support a remote antenna, eg for positioning outside the house.

 

[flint]

I have no idea what you crazy people are on about. At least you have fresh air, greens around and sound of sheep.

It doesn’t really worry me that much. One thing where it would be handy is if my wife was away and something bad happened when I was outside, could be there for days. We do get cut off sometimes if a tree comes down on the line or someone knocks a post down. And a noisy sheep can get on your nerves at 3am.

 

[Crispin]

I did think about putting a large mast up, maybe one day when the building is renovated.

Being a must-have-connection kinda guy I would think nothing of putting up a tall pole with a dish on it to make it work.

Crispin excuse my complete ignorance on this but can I give a 4G wireless router a try ? Which model shall I buy ? Is there just one off payment or a monthly cost ?

Do these wifi 3G/4g routers have a SIM card slot in them ? To enable connection to phone network ?

Like GoK said, they do have a slot, you stick a sim-card in and it logs on the network. Normally a quick easy setup for them.

As for which one? Like everything, you get what you pay. get the smaller cheap ones and they can't go outside. If you're on the fringe of coverage then the difference of a single brick wall means the difference between everything or nothing.
Get one with an external antenna. A quick search shows this one: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4G-LTE-WiFi-router-/112108523097?hash=item1a1a304e59:g:jtYAAOSwawpXvten

You can then get a short run of cable and mount the antenna outside. Remember that cable is killer so shorter the better.
If you're still struggling then you might want to add this to the mix - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/20dBi-Yag...054671?hash=item5d5d67fd4f:g:NpQAAOSwzJ5XfhyN
It claims to be 20DBi gain so should make your signal roughly 5 times better if you point it at the right place.

Lots of options if you wanted to try them. It all boils down to how much internet do you use and what your local 3G/4G is like.

 

[frank rabbets]

We have good in house reception from some suppliers of 3G and 4G. Would there be a monthly cost ?

 

[Crispin]

Cost would be renewing the sim card each month. So GiffGaff for example would be £18 a month for 6GB of data. If you use less then you could use a cheaper package, say 4GB for £15 a month.
GiffGaff is O2 and is pretty good for me at the moment. Notice no difference from when I was on 02.

If you have an spare phone then you can try it at almost no cost. Get a sim (free) activate it (£10 for some data) and create a wifi network with that phone. That becomes your source of internet for the test. If it works then a) you could leave it running like that b) get a proper router and do it "right".

Do you have any visibility of what you currently use in terms of data? Does BT tell you that? I know Virgin will if you call them up.