All the UK phone system is changing
The target date in the UK for getting rid of landlines is 2025. If you have fibre broadband installed at the moment, they replace your landline with VOIP (Voice over IP). So your broadband will no longer be ADSL (which uses the PSTN or telephone exchange). One good thing about this is no more landline charge. Currently £20 pm if you are with BT.
BT call their VOIP service Digital Voice. Sky call it Internet calls. Essentially your home phone won’t work unless plugged into their router or an adapter. Business type VOIP phones should work by plugging into an ethernet port you might have (they have to be configured). They port your number over so you hardly notice the difference.
What about the cost?
The telephone charges for international calls with Digital Voice and Internet calls are still as before.
For a fibre broadband + telephone service there seems to be a price markup of £12 to £15 over the broadband only product.
But lets reflect on how costly the old system was in comparison. I currently pay £42 before I even make a call:
| Unlimited Minutes (+ landline rental ) | £36.36 |
| BT Friends and Family International | £2.11 |
| Voicemail and BT Call protect | £3.69 |
For telephone call charges calls to Brasil are working out to be 14p per minute – so about £2 for 15 minutes.
A Different Way
If like me you have some high call charges not covered by the free minutes package or you want more control and choice – there is a different way.
I’m looking at using Voipfone.co.uk so for £1 a month, and a £10 phone, I am getting call to Brasil for 2p per minute. I’m going to port the my local number over to this service so it will be £5 per month. See the https://www.voipfone.co.uk/plans/comparison page.
So on Ebay I have bought a SNOM 300 phone for £10. I have reset it. Connected to it. Used the Wizard that voipfone have to configure it and it works. I still depend on ADSL broadband so am moving to Virgin media cable. I could have chosen a BT broadband only option, but I figured the chances of BT messing up the transition was quite high – they have to use the copper connection to the house to make a second circuit. As we work from home and Virgin is availble, we would prefer a second distinct fibre connection to the house.
When the Fibre to the Premises FTTP is installed and we are running, I will port my local number over to voipfone and the ADSL broadband will stop at that point as I cancel the contract with both BT and the ISP.
So for the first 18 months the charge for Virgin Media for 200 Mbs will be £28 per month and then rise to the actual cost – £50 per month. So faster and cheaper overall. My average £16 call charges for the month should go down to £2.
Setting up the VOIP phone
First factory reset the snom 300:
* + * - #Now connect the ethernet cable and power off/on. It should boot and get itself an IP address. To see the IP address:
down up tick
Now you can try and login e.g. https://192.168.1.45 Check you can get to it or go straight to the snom wizard at voipfone.net which helps you configure it. You have to login to voipfone.co.uk and then type in the IP of the phone and it will be configured perfectly. It essentially needs to know your VOIP account details:
- Account: Your 8 digit Voipfone number
- Password: The password for the account
- Registrar: sip.voipfone.net
- Authentication Username: Your 8 digit Voipfone number
Under the SIP tab
- Proposed Expiry: 1min
- Support broken Registrar: on
Under Phone Behaviour
- Challenge Response on Phone: off
I also configured:
- HTTP Password: Advanced/Security/HTTP e.g. default is admin/0000 if its already set
- Program a function key (directory) to point to a telephone directory in your account (details on the Address Book page)
References: