Telephone Landline Rental

[UIZ733]

We are giving serious consideration to ditching our landline/fixed phone and reorganizing our internet arrangements. We are currently with Optus and the 'phone' side of the deal (internet is an additional part of our package) costs $35 approx. We don't' use this phone much nowadays as VOIP is our chosen method of making 'expensive' calls. We view the landline more as security and a means of receiving incoming calls that costs us $35/month.
What is the cheapest 'no frills' landline rental available in Australia today?
Any advice experiences appreciated.

[JCOJ]

We ditched our landline altogehter as the only ones that called us on it were people asking for money.

We have our mobiles and people can reach us on those if needs be.

Never looked back - save yourself the $35pm!

[WilSurf]

Are looking to do the same when the 24-months contract runs out..................which is over 20 months.
We have cable and mobile so no need for telephone.

[WaituiRob]

We also ditched ours 12 months ago, one of us has a mobile with $600 calls per month and the other mobile has a great plan with free unlimited calls to five telstra numbers. Our internet is Wi -Fi works well at home and away. Best thing we ever done.

[Crisp Image]

I have considered it but here is why we keep it.
My children are 12 and 14. Sometimes they are home by themselves. They do not have mobile phones and if they did it would be a prepaid account.
If they need to call for anything and they only had mobiles and had no credit they could not do so.
One lady where my wife works had this situation where her son was home from school not well. As the day went on he got worse but could not call his mum cause he didn't have any credit. He ended up in hospital with appendicitis that night.
So on that alone we pay the monthly fee just to have the phone on the wall and we get some calls included.
Both our mobile plans have never gone over the limit and we use them most of the time.
This is my experience and we must be the worst parents in the world cause our kids do not have phones although there is one available for them to take places if necessary.
Regards
Crispy

[shrek4]

We ditched our traditional landline about 7 years ago. We have had naked Internet since then and VOIP. The VoIP bill is around $1 a month as we rarely use it. Our setup is just like any traditional landline phone. We have a cordless phone which can be used anywhere in the house and it operates exactly like any other traditional phone.

In addition we have our mobiles. Reality is most of our friends and family use their mobiles to call us or we use our mobiles to call them. With the mobile plans we have you get a certain number of calls included and we've never gone over that.

Our total bill for the month is about $50. $49 for the Internet on a 150GB plan via internode and about $1 for VoIP calls. In addition we pay $5 per year to get a phone number connected to the VoIP which allows anyone to call us, just like any other local telephone number.

Best thing too was when we moved house we one transferred the Internet and once we plugged the modem in at the new place the phone was good to go. Too easy!

[Landyline]

We dropped the landline and ADSL when we moved to Dalby.  Originally it was only until we bought a house but it has been 3.5 years now. We originally had two mobiles and a hotspot.  However we dropped the hotspot device and just tether the mobiles now.

I would actually like to get ADSL again but I refuse to pay the $30/month line rental that is required to get the ADSL as only Telstra has exchange equipment here. It would mean about $90/month for an acceptable limit.

It would be different if we had older kids but that is 5 years away at least before we have kids in that bracket.

[JD-120]

well this thread got me thinking, so I just got off the phone with telstra.

I pay 22 / month for line rental and usually make a maximum of 5 ph calls. the rest are via work funded mobile.

I told telstra I wanted to drop my phone line and keep my internet. They said I can keep my phone line, pay NO line rental, but they will increase my calls to 50c / local call (instead of 30c) and 50c/min for national and mobile.

SO i reckon thats a pretty good deal. no line rental, keep my traditional number, pay an extra 20c per ph call that i rarely make.

[shrek4]

well this thread got me thinking, so I just got off the phone with telstra.

I pay 22 / month for line rental and usually make a maximum of 5 ph calls. the rest are via work funded mobile.

I told telstra I wanted to drop my phone line and keep my internet. They said I can keep my phone line, pay NO line rental, but they will increase my calls to 50c / local call (instead of 30c) and 50c/min for national and mobile.

SO i reckon thats a pretty good deal. no line rental, keep my traditional number, pay an extra 20c per ph call that i rarely make.

We pay no line rental too but kept the internet via the naked internet option. Using ViOP our call rate is 10c un-timed local and national and very very cheap to mobiles.

I'm assuming Telstra offer this as they're still making money of the call rates + overpriced internet.   

[JD-120]

Over priced, absolutely! Unfortunately where I live, I have no option but Telstra

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

[HEM19X]

Likewise, we ditched our landline 2 years ago, we have 2 prepaid Telstra phone - one personal & one business, run all of our net use via 4G wireless.

The biggest advantage of this is NO MORE UNWANTED PHONE CALLS trying to sell me crap, fix my PC etc.

[JCAT]

well this thread got me thinking, so I just got off the phone with telstra.

I pay 22 / month for line rental and usually make a maximum of 5 ph calls. the rest are via work funded mobile.

I told telstra I wanted to drop my phone line and keep my internet. They said I can keep my phone line, pay NO line rental, but they will increase my calls to 50c / local call (instead of 30c) and 50c/min for national and mobile.

SO i reckon thats a pretty good deal. no line rental, keep my traditional number, pay an extra 20c per ph call that i rarely make.

Now that sounds good.

We are only keeping the home line because of our children being home alone as well.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[krisandkev]

It still annoys me that calls to 1800 or 13 numbers on a mobile are still charged to you.  That is where a land line is handy, being stuck on such a call for what seems like hours.     Kevin

[Kris]

Ditching the landline only works when you've got mobile reception in/around your house; lucky you lot who can do that!

We've got a combo deal with iinet, which gives me landline/calls/internet for $80/m... this is better than what we were paying before!

[znelbok]

That was my thought exactly.

We get next to no reception inside and we did give the no land line a go, but when its the middle of winter and you have to go outside to make/take a call its not very nice so we put the landline back on.

Telstra and Optus both now offer a repeater to boost the signal inside the house, but they want too much money for them.  You can buy gear from other suppliers at a much better price (in the order of $300) but they are usually only a single band and we have both Optus and Telstra so it was not cost effetive.

For those that do cut the line (and those that dont), Uniden make a cordlesss handset that has bluetooth so you can use both landline and mobile from the same handset.  Its a long range setup and ours came with three handsets and two repeater/charging stations.  Great option so you can sit the mobile on charge and just use the handsets regardless of which phone rang.

Mick

[gibbo301]

well this thread got me thinking, so I just got off the phone with telstra.

I pay 22 / month for line rental and usually make a maximum of 5 ph calls. the rest are via work funded mobile.

I told telstra I wanted to drop my phone line and keep my internet. They said I can keep my phone line, pay NO line rental, but they will increase my calls to 50c / local call (instead of 30c) and 50c/min for national and mobile.

SO i reckon thats a pretty good deal. no line rental, keep my traditional number, pay an extra 20c per ph call that i rarely make.

Just rang telstra i pay $49.90 for my broadband and $22 odd for line rental to pay no line rental my broadband goes up to $73.00 so were is the savings ?

[Variflex]

We ditched ours about 7 years back, I simply couldn't justify the line rental, I could have a mobile phone with X amount of credit each month for that, our daughter does have her own mobile as well so there was always a phone at home as I too was concerned about the security aspect of dumping the land line, at the time the daughter kept harassing us about having her own mobile so I figured why put off the inevitable as wifey tends to give her everything she asks for Anyway,

[madmax]

Just rang telstra i pay $49.90 for my broadband and $22 odd for line rental to pay no line rental my broadband goes up to $73.00 so were is the savings ?

You need to ditch Telstra as your internet provider 

[krisandkev]

You need to ditch Telstra as your internet provider 

Not so easy when you don't live in a city.  And they still are the best for travel in Aust.  Kevin

[nbd73]

Not so easy when you don't live in a city.  And they still are the best for travel in Aust.  Kevin

I have just switched to Telechoice and they use the telstra mobile network. They dont have access to Telstra's 4G network for mobile internet, but that is only available in limited areas as yet anyway. Far cheaper, check their website.

[Swogjb]

I have just switched to Telechoice and they use the telstra mobile network. They dont have access to Telstra's 4G network for mobile internet, but that is only available in limited areas as yet anyway. Far cheaper, check their website.

I setup my mum and an employee with Telechoice about 6 months ago.
I get unlimited calls and  3gig of data with my Mums phone for $49 per month.
And for $20 per month my employee gets $500 worth of calls and 1 giga data.
The coverage is as good as Telstra because they share the same network.

The only downside is the Telechoice call centre is just as frustrating as the Telstra call centre to deal with. I had a couple of issues early on with direct debit not coming out of my account and Telechoice trying to slug me a late payment fee when the problem was at their end.
At this stage I am a happy customer, but then again I was happy with Kogan as well.
 

[nbd73]

The only downside is the Telechoice call centre is just as frustrating as the Telstra call centre to deal with. I had a couple of issues early on with direct debit not coming out of my account and Telechoice trying to slug me a late payment fee when the problem was at their end.
At this stage I am a happy customer, but then again I was happy with Kogan as well.
 

Agreed, but find a phone company that doesn't have crap customer service.  Having just ditched iinet after less than a year of atrocious service I am under no illusions as to the abilities of telechoice to be any better. But as long as I don't have to contact them and they don't rip me off it should be all good. Besides, if all phone companies are as crap as each other I figure I may as well pay the least amount possible.
As for earlier comments regarding a signal booster, this is the way of the future for phone companies instead of installing more and/or better mobile towers. Telstra relocated the mobile repeater tower in my work place suburb last year and destroyed the mobile coverage within the office. Their attitude was bad luck and my employer had to buy the booster instead of being supplied it for free. It cost~$700. I imagine we could have gone to court but for a one off fee who could be bothered? It's how big business bullies the community into accepting sub standard service or resolutions to situations.

[elle.mac]

We ditched Telstra and went to internode for about $110 month we have landline, 75gb ads land fetch TV. Also moved my husbands mobile across as the plan was much better value and mine will go as we'll once our contract with Telstra is up and we buy a sat phone for travelling so no need to worry about network away from home.

[hargs]

I went to disconnect the landline ( Telstra ) and they offered me $ 14 a month ... So that's ring in and ring out but local calls cost $ 1 I think ...so only use it when really need too.