To be frank, @papahuhu, a phone is a phone. “Better” is purely about fitness for purpose for you. The beauty of VOIP is that it’s not an exclusive choice.

A lot of routers have a port you can plug an analogue phone into. IP phones can also be used on the network - we have a £50 Yealink in the corner of the living room. You can also install VOIP client apps on your mobile phones so you can answer “landline” calls that way too. Ditto a VOIP client on your PC and use a headset.

If you like your existing analogue phones, I’d say use them. If you want more handsets, it makes better sense to buy IP phones rather than spend money on obsolete tech, but I’d play with a VOIP client for your mobile first, especially since that means you can answer your home phone whilst you‘re out and about.

@majordennisbloodnok 

Thanks. I had a debate about renewal cost with my ISP and decided it was time to decouple the telephony to a stand alone VOIP provider. Thought I may as well upgrade the hardware too as I’d been having trouble with the phone connection dropping out and wondered if it was our old tech. Yes, the diversion to mobile is a great functionality.
There’s quite a wide distribution of cost between the VOIP providers, did you find one that worked well for your circumstances please?

Posted by: @papahuhu

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For anyone technically minded.

I’m switching from telephony being provided by ISP to a stand alone VOIP provider. Need to either purchase an analogue adaptor and use our 15 year old cordless phones, or, splash out on some new IP phones. Anyone know if it’s worth £150 to buy a couple of cordless Yealink IP DECT phones and plug directly into the router please? Are they really better or no different. 

Some cordless (DECT) phones, such as the Gigaset (Siemens) ones I have, have a basestation that will terminate VOIP calls.  It then talks DECT to the handset.  Maybe you can pick up such a basestation to go with your existing phones if they are DECT (I have a Gigaset DECT basestation which you can have for £10 plus postage).  In theory DECT is DECT and any DECT basestation should talk to any DECT phone.

Beware however that Vodafone, and maybe some other VOIP/broadband providers, configure their VOIP service in a way that pretty much constrains you to using their own router.   Your route of a standalone VOIP provider is the right one once you have control of any number you wish to retain.

FWIW my own setup (after a long and weary argument with my broadband provider, Vodafone, to unbundle the VOIP number from the broadband) is Vodafone broadband, A&A VOIP, VOIP terminated on a secondhand fritzbox router that also acts as a DECT basestation; Gigaset DECT handsets.  It works well and the router also acts as an slightly fuller-featured answering machine than the voicemail provided by A&A.

We just use our iPhones all the time (with WiFi calls enabled if the signal is rubbish) and the landline has been disconnected. Am I missing something here? Why pay for an extra handset plus additional service fees?

Posted by: @editor

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We just use our iPhones all the time (with WiFi calls enabled if the signal is rubbish) and the landline has been disconnected. Am I missing something here? Why pay for an extra handset plus additional service fees?

I asked myself the same question when I was going through the hell with Vodafone. 

The answer for me was in order to keep the landline number and because the mobile signal at home is rubbish, albeit that the latter could be fixed with wifi calling (which in my case, albeit not my wife's, requires a new smartphone). 

Had I needed new handsets for the VOIP I may well have come to a different conclusion or (more likely) just used a VOIP client on my smartphone.  The VOIP service fee is only £1.60pcm so not significant.

All of the above is just cover for the real answer which is of course age!

@papahuhu, the short answer is yes. However, the longer answer involves a bit of context.

Our home is pretty remote (no mains gas or sewage, for instance), so when we moved in we had little choice broadband-wise. It was fibre to the cabinet and when we were lucky it might manage 20Mbps. That meant lockdown, when it came, was challenging, and we were delighted when a local community initiative offered full fibre to the premises at 1Gbps both ways. Being a community initiative it's cheap (£45 per month) but doesn't provide addons like a normal ISP, so I quickly sorted out going independent with our email and phone. This was made easier by the fact I already owned a domain name so email was just a matter of finding an independent provider (effectively my family became our own small business for about £2 per person per month with all the extra security and compliance goodies that go with it) and the VOIP service just needed to allow my wife and me to effectively use our home phone as a work phone. As a result, I picked one that, for £10/month at that time, provided unlimited bundled calls to UK landline and mobile numbers and that worked brilliantly, especially since cancelling BT meant a line rental saving that made it a no brainer.

Fast forward to today and we're obviously no longer in lockdown. Both my and my wife's employers have MS Teams installed as standard on their PC builds and so pretty much exclusively there's no need for business use of our home phone. Additionally, our VOIP provider has changed their plans so it's now £13 per person and a minimum of two users per month, so the cost is significantly increased whilst the requirement has markedly dropped. Our issue with living in a mobile black spot has been resolved by our mobile provider (Giffgaff) now providing wifi calling, so I'm currently deciding whether to move to a VOIP provider that has pay as you go plans or simply to ditch a "landline" altogether. The existing VOIP provider (Sipgate) has been fine but no longer provides a good fit for our domestic needs.

In your situation, I would seriously consider a pay as you go option too. Obviously it depends on how many outbound calls you make but given how much we all tend to reach for our mobile by preference for outbound calls (if we call at all rather than text), a home phone that is essentially free except on the rare occasions you need to call out is an appealing option.

Posted by: @editor

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We just use our iPhones all the time (with WiFi calls enabled if the signal is rubbish) and the landline has been disconnected. Am I missing something here? Why pay for an extra handset plus additional service fees?

Agreed, @editor, except for small things that make big differences. For instance:

• With a VOIP number, I don't have to give out my mobile number to everyone who wants to ring me.
• With a PAYG plan (one of my options), the VOIP number is effectively free.
• Many people like the feel of a normal telephone handset and VOIP handsets are no more expensive than analogue ones.
• If you have a VOIP service, a SIP client on your PC means you can work completely hands-free. Headsets for mobiles are certainly also available but I have one for the PC already and don't want another.
• There can be big variations in price between providers for international calls and VOIP prices for a given time of day may be cheaper. I realise this may well be less relevant if the caller and the callee both have a good videoconferencing alternative that works out free.
• There are dinosaur companies out there that provide services you may want and, when signing up, require you to provide a landline number.

In fairness, the justifications for landlines are much more blurred than ever they were before but there are still some.

@jamespa 

Wow, seems complex but I think I understand what you have done. 
That A&A service looks interesting, the household largely uses mobiles so landline gets limited usage, i recon I could get it down to £5 per month or less which is 1/3 of my existing service renewal. I also used to pay monthly for mesh, I’m taking that off too. We have my ill parents living with us now, so I can use his status to qualify for social tariff broadband, £12.50 a month rolling contract, no price rises, no termination charges. It’s a bit slow but if I mesh it robustly it should be sufficient. 

I think my plan is to go with a IP phone, I think I need to change my VM hub to be a modem and then connect my own wifi6 mesh network to that modem. I’m not entirely  sure if I need to have one of the mesh routers to be hardwired to the modem or not and I’m not sure if the IP phone connects by WPS to the modem or to the mesh router or wether I need to hardwire it to the modem. 

Posted by: @papahuhu

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Wow, seems complex but I think I understand what you have done. 

It sounds complex but, once the problems with Vodafone were fixed, its actually very simple and fewer boxes (because the router is dual purposing as as a DECT basestation and answerphone).  The potential advantage of terminating the VOIP on the router is that there is no NAT between the VOIP termination point and the internet potentially to mess things up so one less thing to go wrong.  You need to tell the router the credentials for your chosen VOIP service of course, but unless you get VOIP from someone who ships a piece of hardware that is inevitable.

Posted by: @papahuhu

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I think my plan is to go with a IP phone, I think I need to change my VM hub to be a modem and then connect my own wifi6 mesh network to that modem. I’m not entirely  sure if I need to have one of the mesh routers to be hardwired to the modem or not and I’m not sure if the IP phone connects by WPS to the modem or to the mesh router or wether I need to hardwire it to the modem. 

... fair enough, but do consider just adding a voip app to your mobile so you dont need any new hardware.  Mizudroid works well for android, I cant comment on an app for iphone but there must be one (or indeed many)

Posted by: @papahuhu

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That A&A service looks interesting,

I cant fault them. Well thought through service, no BS, and real people on the end of tech support who actually understand what they are talking about.  

Posted by: @papahuhu

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and then connect my own wifi6 mesh network to that modem. I’m not entirely  sure if I need to have one of the mesh routers to be hardwired to the modem or not and I’m not sure if the IP phone connects by WPS to the modem or to the mesh router or wether I need to hardwire it to the modem. 

Best to have the mesh access point hardwired to the internet router (or better still, assuming the mesh access point is built into a router, use it as the internet router - you will need your ISP login credentials which they will give you).  If you do the former you may need to take care to avoid double NAT though which can mess with VOIP.  This may occur unless you disable routing functions on the mesh router and/or use the right physical ports.  If you post a sketch of the proposed arrangement someone (possibly me) will doubtless comment!

@jamespa 

if it was just me I’d ditch the home phone altogether, but the oldies like to use a landline. Although my father was a telephone engineer, at 89 he just can’t navigate through a mobile phone. 

Posted by: @papahuhu

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@jamespa 

if it was just me I’d ditch the home phone altogether, but the oldies like to use a landline. Although my father was a telephone engineer, at 89 he just can’t navigate through a mobile phone. 

TBH I find it difficult to deny that this is the logical conclusion. 

I worked in (fairly cutting edge) telecoms for nearly 30 years, am generally pretty IT literate, and can certainly navigate a mobile phone, and I consider myself reasonably logical.  But I still, for some largely inexplicable reason, like a landline and at £1.60 pcm (I already have all the hardware) its not much of a hardship.

Conclusion - Im not as logical as I like to think!