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If its an internet phone will the landline charge be dropped?

Roseyhue
On our wavelength

It seems that the whole country is to go over to internet digital phones by 2025.  With the transfer of landline calls to the internet I assume that there will be a huge cost saving to the providers because they no longer have a separate 50v system to maintain.  When Virgin bills were itemised it was visible that there was a £19.00/month charge that you had to pay on top of call charges if you had a landline phone.  Can we expect this to be removed and thus a reduction in our bills?

How does this new internet phone system differ from free skype calls?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

goslow
Alessandro Volta

@Roseyhue wrote:

Thanks for your view on this Goslow, but there are two completely separate wire systems crossing the whole country at the moment and both cost a lot to maintain. 

<snip>

I think its a fair question to ask, even if the answer is that we have no choice!  At least its out in the open.


As mentioned on here in the past, in the first round of changes to 21CV, your phone is actually still connected to the same telephony exchange equipment as before so that bit remains unchanged at the moment, with the continuing cost of running it. Not sure where you are getting your info about all call routing being transferred to mobile connections.

Come 2025, traditional telephone exchanges are due to be shut down . At that point, providers will have to start offering some kind of alternative service and then prices may change.

As it stands at the moment, you pay a provider for a bundle of services (which may or may not include the phone line). It is up to the customer to decide which particular bundle of services offers best value from which provider. You do not have to have a landline with VM but the way VM prices its services is to apply additional discounts for more bundled services. Hence, having the phone in a bundle may reduce the overall package renewal price with VM.

VM now seems to be offering a corded backup emergency phone for some vulnerable customer groups which automatically switches to a mobile connection when the main VM line is down. Seemingly the customer is charged for calls as per their VM landline package and the automatic switching is intended to be seamless. For wide area power cuts, phone masts may also lose power. Under those circumstances, no phone connectivity would be available other than 999 calls.

In the meantime, you could consider abandoning the landline altogether and taking out a new package elsewhere with no phone service (you may be able to leave VM without early disconnection fees if you have received a price rise notification allowing this).

Some on here have reported taking their number to a true UK VOIP provider and removing the landline from the package that way.

See where this Helpful Answer was posted

10 REPLIES 10

Martin_N
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi Roseyhue,

Thank you for your post. 

Changing over to the new Landline phone system wouldn't change the monthly package price. 

^Martin

goslow
Alessandro Volta

@Roseyhue wrote:

It seems that the whole country is to go over to internet digital phones by 2025.  With the transfer of landline calls to the internet I assume that there will be a huge cost saving to the providers because they no longer have a separate 50v system to maintain.  When Virgin bills were itemised it was visible that there was a £19.00/month charge that you had to pay on top of call charges if you had a landline phone.  Can we expect this to be removed and thus a reduction in our bills?

How does this new internet phone system differ from free skype calls?


Your phone charges, sadly, remain the same post-switchover.

You are still paying for the same phone service from VM and use of a VM landline number. You continue to use a standard domestic telephone plugged into the back of the VM hub instead of a telephone wall socket.

It is just the method of delivering the service that has changed

Roseyhue
On our wavelength

Am I surprised?

Koda
Up to speed

Skype calls are only free if you are calling a Skype username.

With this it's still a landline just in digital format. You still route calls out to numbers which will charge to be connected to, and you still have the use of a phone number for people to call you on. Additionally you'll be given an allowance. At minimum this will be free weekend calling.

In reality, nobody is paying £19 a month 'line rental' - Because landline is generally simply bundled in with Virgin Media packages that make your bill cheaper overall by taking additional services. Various discounts are applied and almost nobody has landline only with Virgin. It's a legacy service that hasn't been offered for a long time to new customers. Mostly only used by a small minority of elderly people. 

You shouldn't expect a change to your monthly price since they are providing you the exact same service. Just by a slightly different method. Rather than making landline cheaper to maintain, the issue was that the ancient copper network was becoming increasingly expensive to maintain to the point where it could easily cost more than what people were paying for the service for technology that simply isn't fit for purpose in 2023. This change brings costs down to a more viable level more than anything else. 

Roseyhue
On our wavelength

Thanks for your view on this Goslow, but there are two completely separate wire systems crossing the whole country at the moment and both cost a lot to maintain. 

The service may appear to be the same, but the cost to provide it will be less.  If the new digital service piggybacks on the mobile phone system then all the tech to route phone calls on a new "landline" system to a distant person already exists and is being maintained. It may be that the new digital landline is effectively a "mobile phone" so why have both?  Can a Virgin subscriber chose not to have a "landline"?

The present analogue landline system supplies 50v to every landline phone in the country and this allows it to continue working, even if the local 240v mains service suffers a power cut.  Without 240v power to your home your internet hub would be down because of it.  Perhaps even your local "cabinet" will be down, in which case a backup battery for your hub in your own home may not help you. 

In 2025 the complete 50v system will be abandoned along with all the costs associated with it.  That must be a massive saving.  Under the new digital system, a local power failure will render the internet hub based system unusable because the hub will not work.  No ability to make emergency services calls.  You will need a mobile phone to call the fire brigade or an ambulance or the police, and perhaps even that will only work for an hour if the nearby mobile phone cell mast has only one hour backup power supply?

I think its a fair question to ask, even if the answer is that we have no choice!  At least its out in the open.


It is possible to operate a VOIP phone with out the high monthly charger of a telco / ISP bundle.

Port the number to a proper VOIP provider & you get 4 advantages : -

1) you now control the number
2) minimal to low monthly fees
3) a real VOIP phone can be used, as can a VOIP app on a mobile or computer.
4) on the next change ISP telephones are not involved.

nodrogd
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@Roseyhue wrote:

It seems that the whole country is to go over to internet digital phones by 2025.  With the transfer of landline calls to the internet I assume that there will be a huge cost saving to the providers because they no longer have a separate 50v system to maintain.  When Virgin bills were itemised it was visible that there was a £19.00/month charge that you had to pay on top of call charges if you had a landline phone.  Can we expect this to be removed and thus a reduction in our bills?

How does this new internet phone system differ from free skype calls?


The new phone service is not internet based. It is digitally transmitted via your hub to the local cable headend where it converts to analogue & routes through the same exchange it has always used. All that is removed is the analogue line between your house & the local fibre node a few streets away where it used to go digitally back to the exchange. So not a lot has changed, specifically the expensive to run PSTN exchange. When the PSTN infrastructure is switched off nationally by all telcos in 2025, then you are likely to see price reductions with the line rental absorbed into your Broadband charge.

As per the post above you can switch to a VoIP provider that has no rental charges. The downside is dropping the phone line loses a lot of bundle discount & your Broadband cost will rise as a result, gobbling up most of any savings you might make.

VM 350BB 2xV6 & Landline. Freeview/Freesat HD, ASDA/Tesco PAYG Mobile. Cable customer since 1993

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media. Learn more

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goslow
Alessandro Volta

@Roseyhue wrote:

Thanks for your view on this Goslow, but there are two completely separate wire systems crossing the whole country at the moment and both cost a lot to maintain. 

<snip>

I think its a fair question to ask, even if the answer is that we have no choice!  At least its out in the open.


As mentioned on here in the past, in the first round of changes to 21CV, your phone is actually still connected to the same telephony exchange equipment as before so that bit remains unchanged at the moment, with the continuing cost of running it. Not sure where you are getting your info about all call routing being transferred to mobile connections.

Come 2025, traditional telephone exchanges are due to be shut down . At that point, providers will have to start offering some kind of alternative service and then prices may change.

As it stands at the moment, you pay a provider for a bundle of services (which may or may not include the phone line). It is up to the customer to decide which particular bundle of services offers best value from which provider. You do not have to have a landline with VM but the way VM prices its services is to apply additional discounts for more bundled services. Hence, having the phone in a bundle may reduce the overall package renewal price with VM.

VM now seems to be offering a corded backup emergency phone for some vulnerable customer groups which automatically switches to a mobile connection when the main VM line is down. Seemingly the customer is charged for calls as per their VM landline package and the automatic switching is intended to be seamless. For wide area power cuts, phone masts may also lose power. Under those circumstances, no phone connectivity would be available other than 999 calls.

In the meantime, you could consider abandoning the landline altogether and taking out a new package elsewhere with no phone service (you may be able to leave VM without early disconnection fees if you have received a price rise notification allowing this).

Some on here have reported taking their number to a true UK VOIP provider and removing the landline from the package that way.

Roseyhue
On our wavelength

Thank you goslow for your reply.  The really good thing about this forum is that one gets more and better information from the contributors than seems to come from Virgin (who seem to keep their head down!)  We have yet to go through the switch from analogue landline phone to the Virgin hub based system and it will be what it will be.  I just feel that I cannot make the best decision for this household if the information that I base the decision on is incomplete or faulty.

Thanks again