FAO RichardandRos

The rate of cessation of landlines is dependent on a number of factors...

Locally, we've all had Truspeed teams digging up our pavements to run fibre close to everyone's house, but this is a vast national project and will take time. 

whilst we may retain 'telephone numbers' going forward, it's not going to be an easy job convincing many older folk that using the equivalent of Whatsapp (VOIP voice over internet protocol) is the same as 'the dog and bone'.

many older folk use proprietary software like FaceTime without a care, and their phones may switch to VOIP in poor reception areas, but also without any understanding of how it works.

Not necessary as a user but when someone tells you your going to lose your landline the comprehension, and therefore the confidence, might not be there.

 As Brue says, we don't know what we'll be offered...we now have fibre just outside the front door and, AFAK, I'm paying for a Fibre (to the cabinet) system. Will my provider just come along and connect us up as that's what most think they're getting?

otherwise, it's a bit of a waste of time if folk are going to balk at a connection charge and a contract price rise for a system that (let's face it) most don't need.

back to routers etc...I have a small Vodafone HUAWEI mifi which has no aerial connections (a cheap suck it and see solution) and in almost every area, I've been able to get sufficient speeds to use the Firestick and to download Sky programs along with internet browsing for two iPads.

with the assumption that coverage and power/speed will only get better, I'm happy to give it a bit longer before going for anything different.

YT when you say you use your Mifi  alongside a  firestick is that in the UK or away in Spain.

I'm on Smarty for my phone and OH is with Lebara, the Mifi is unlocked so on a payg. We found last year that we didn't really have the speed to stream TV. 

That's our thoughts but we are currently on a contract with plus net so prices are fixed.

Agree that If the TP Link works well at home we could ditch the phone line and broadband. 

OH just tried our mifi in the house with the aerial popped out the window. He connected to the  iplayer no problem a bit of pixalating but watchable, his thoughts are a fast speed mifi should do the job. Without the mifi mobile signal wasn't even strong enough to connect to  iplayer it just kept buffering. 

TG it's anywhere. So far we've not had an issue anywhere that comes to mind. The mifi has a sort of traffic light indicator...green for a decent signal, amber middling and red no good.

probably had red once and amber a couple of times but generally the signal with Vodafone seems pretty good. The mifi was about £40 and I have a 2nd sim loaded which was dirt cheap, £10 a month for 100gb incl roaming. 25gb cap overseas, but another 25gb in my phone if that's a problem.

what network PAYG is in the mifi? Was this abroad? Perhaps some reduce speeds in some areas?

Can you try the mifi in other parts of the uk at some point.

Cheers, it's a 3 data sim 24gb. Live for 24 mths after initiating.

Used it last year in Spain and again in Lanzarote this year.

Tried in the UK to when away recently and previously and works fine. Until today we hadn't tried it for TV streaming. Might be better if the signal were stronger🤔

We are pretty much sorted as you know for TV in Spain 😉 but we are thinking of the future, we may be going East in the springtime and not sure if we will get coverage.

Plus as I mentioned at home we would like to get rid of the land-line and broadband. Wouldn't mind the cost if we were here 24/7 but we are not, I dislike paying for something I'm not getting full use of. 

 Not sure which link brue - and which details are out of date.  I accept that there is a newer version of the aerial but I thought I'd stick with the one that had a lot of  good reviews. As long as the lead from the aerial has two leads, it will replace the built in aerials on the router.

As far as losing your landline is concerned - we have fibre cable to right outside the house and it would be a quick connection to bring it right to the house - and I'm told it would actually be cheaper to have full fibre rather than what I have at the moment (the landline goes).  What's putting me off is that a friend of Ros's has just gone down this route and her phone connection (Voip presumably) is dreadful - distorted and cutting off every few minutes.

The whole of our small town now has fibre to the doorstep but judging by the number of Openreach vans you now see around, the take-up seems to be minimal.

Richardandros said 

As far as losing your landline is concerned - we have fibre cable to right outside the house and it would be a quick connection to bring it right to the house - and I'm told it would actually be cheaper to have full fibre rather than what I have at the moment (the landline goes).  What's putting me off is that a friend of Ros's has just gone down this route and her phone connection (Voip presumably) is dreadful - distorted and cutting off every few minutes.

The whole of our small town now has fibre to the doorstep but judging by the number of Openreach vans you now see around, the take-up seems to be minimal.

We are in the same position except for a while we actually did run the high speed fibre alongside our much slower fibre to cabinet. Initially they couldn't port our landline across to the fibre network but that is possible now. However I came to the conclusion that having fibre, in reality didn't provide us with much of an advantage. We don't do a lot of streaming so I gave up the fibre and stuck with the FTTC. It was important for us to keep our (cherished) phone number. Also Margaret's hearing is not so good and she finds using the telephone difficult at times so if there are problems associated with VOIP I am glad we did. (I appreciate its coming anyway)  If anyone else is in the same position with their hearing be very cautious with buying phones for the hard of hearing and if you do buy them on a sale or return basis if that is possible. We find our standard Panasonic wireless phones far superior. With the availability of fibre to the house I think so many have changed over that hardly anyone is using FTTP so we get a pretty consistent 35 mbps download which is fine for what we need. Obviously things are changing and we may not have that option in the future?

David

We also much, much prefer to keep our landline (as long as we can).  OH is also a bit on the deaf side (he disputes but he is!) and he can only hear clearly on the landline, in fact if anyone calls his mobile he will ask them to call back on the landline number - our Doctors are the worst for this whatever we ask them to use!  We have fibre to the cabinet which is somewhere near us but nothing (as yet) in our street.  Not totally sure we understand all this technology either just yet.