Alternative phone providers

[Taffycat]

I noticed fairly recently, that our ISP is offering a telephone package:

We are able to provide you with a standard telephone line based on the BT network at cheaper rates than BT by dealing direct with our wholesale supplier and Openreach, who are the engineers for UK phone lines.

Their prices, etc., compare favourably to BT's, and of course, the company is much easier to deal with, (no huge overseas call-centres, and no confusing maze of departments to go through, in the event of a problem,) so we have been toying with the idea of switching.

In a hypothetical situation, where we wanted to keep the telephone package, but go with a different ISP, I was just wondering about possible problems? Many ISPs insist upon the customer having a BT line, don't they, so would they still accept a BT line which has been taken over by another company? (There would be no change to the landline number, etc.) I'm thinking not, but wondered whether any of you would know please?

I know of one major drawback already... that is, if we wanted to reinstate BT, there would be a charge, AND we would incur their dratted 12 month contract.

Just trying to gather a few facts and info before making any firm decisions, so thank you for reading this.

 

[Ian]

I have a feeling that you may need to switch away from the ISP phoneline if you join another ISP at a later date. I can't find a link which confirms this, but my dad had this problem when he wanted to move away from TalkTalk.

The BT re-connection charge is ~£125 IIRC, so it's not exactly small change if you need to pay this at a later date. However, they sometimes waive this if you join one of their high-end packages.

 

[Taffycat]

Hi Ian, and thank you, you have confirmed our thoughts

Must admit though, that it's still pretty tempting to make a move from BT. I hate having to contact them about anything, because invariably, it leads to a complete run-around, so it would be quite refreshing to be able to just ring an office and speak with someone who is actually capable of advising/assisting. Sometimes, the "old fashioned" non-call-centre set-up, can be good! But, we will probably give it a bit more thought before deciding.

 

[V_R]

Its a good idea if your planning on staying with them iirc. I nearly did the same thing wit AAISP - http://www.aaisp.net.uk/home.html

But in the end i went with Be. But AAISP do rent the line. Last i looked it was just the line for BB, no calls etc though.

My reason was so i didn't have to have anything to do with the monkeys that are BT.....

 

[Taffycat]

Hi V_R, yes, "losing" BT is the big incentive here also - plus I've been happy with our ISP, (Adsl24) particularly since their switch to the Murphx platform.

Recently, there was news that our local Exchange is going to be C&W enabled, so might wait to see what will be on offer after that happens.