MissRiaElaine wrote:
On 18/07/2019 22:32, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:

I have a landline installed but it’s never had a telephone connected to it.
In the previous place I lived, I did have a telephone connected, and the
only calls I ever received were for previous users of that number.

If you have a landline, surely it's cheaper to use it for calls than a
mobile..? For us, it's still cheaper to use our landline than a mobile.

For me the reverse is the case. The mobile comes with unlimited free
minutes and SMS including to mobiles, something the landline doesn’t offer,
so the landline is more expensive to use.

Robin

On 18/07/2019 23:38, bob wrote:
MissRiaElaine wrote:
On 18/07/2019 22:32, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:

I have a landline installed but it’s never had a telephone connected to it.
In the previous place I lived, I did have a telephone connected, and the
only calls I ever received were for previous users of that number.

If you have a landline, surely it's cheaper to use it for calls than a
mobile..? For us, it's still cheaper to use our landline than a mobile.

For me the reverse is the case. The mobile comes with unlimited free
minutes and SMS including to mobiles, something the landline doesn’t offer,
so the landline is more expensive to use.

But how much per month are you paying for each..? For us it's a total of
£35 for FTTC broadband (average speed 45 Mb/s) plus a landline with
unlimited calls to landlines and mobiles.

Mobile costs are virtually zero, as we only use them for urgent calls.


--
Ria in Aberdeen

[Send address is invalid, use sipsoup at gmail dot com to reply direct]

MissRiaElaine wrote:
On 18/07/2019 23:38, bob wrote:
MissRiaElaine wrote:
On 18/07/2019 22:32, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:

I have a landline installed but it’s never had a telephone connected to it.
In the previous place I lived, I did have a telephone connected, and the
only calls I ever received were for previous users of that number.

If you have a landline, surely it's cheaper to use it for calls than a
mobile..? For us, it's still cheaper to use our landline than a mobile.

For me the reverse is the case. The mobile comes with unlimited free
minutes and SMS including to mobiles, something the landline doesn’t offer,
so the landline is more expensive to use.

But how much per month are you paying for each..? For us it's a total of
£35 for FTTC broadband (average speed 45 Mb/s) plus a landline with
unlimited calls to landlines and mobiles.

Mobile costs are virtually zero, as we only use them for urgent calls.


One of the current major advantages of mobile contracts is that your
monthly allowances can be used anywhere in the EU. So if you travel
frequently to EU countries, as I do, those included mobile minutes, texts
and data are more useful than any land line equivalents. Whether that will
continue post-Brexit, I have no idea.

In message , at 19:31:24 on Thu, 18
Jul 2019, MissRiaElaine remarked:
On 18/07/2019 15:18, Roland Perry wrote:

Networks have tried hard over the years to introduce their equivalent
of "standing charges" to fight back a little bit. One I'll be writing
about later (in more detail) in another subthread, is the O2
requirement that PAYG phones wanting to use the tube Wifi are topped
up at least once a month.

A standing charge equals a contract. Making someone top up monthly is
effectively forcing them onto one in all but name.

It's a slight discount, because the typical top-up would be £10 and the
typical contract £30. And because you can stop any time you like (apart
from some more recent hybrid plans that include a partly-subsidised
phone) it's not in any sense a "contract".

--
Roland Perry

In message , at 15:43:43 on Thu, 18 Jul
2019, remarked:
Ones where the credit rolls over and you don't have to make a regular
calls to keep them alive, aren't quite as common as you claim. The
networks hate them because they tend to get used in "glovebox" phones
were they have all the costs of maintaining the number and the billing
records, for virtually no revenue.

Oh come on, its costs them precisely £0.00 to maintain a number, its simply
data in a database.

Ah, the marginal costs fallacy rears its ugly head.

The only cost involved in an unused number is the cost to the user when the
phone company disconnects the SIM. The rest of it costs nothing because the
infrastructure would be needed regardless and linking a phone number to a
SIM id is probably a few hundred bytes or less in a DB. You could store the
entire UK phone book and every cellphone IMEI number on a USB stick with room to
spare never mind a fully fledged datacentre.

Let me know when you need a new spade, if that one wears out.

That's even assuming there's facilities which aren't charged to the
operator on a per-number basis.

O2 are not a virtual network.

O2 *are* an operator, they own the base station equipment.

Sure about that? It's not uncommon for it to be outsourced to people
like Ericsson.

They may well have, but any charges relating to the physical layer RF systems
will have nothing to do with how many subscribers the network has in its DB
unless they have so many they need to upgrade.

Ditto. Or are you an expert in the fees charged for outsourcing, now?
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 23:19:05 on Thu, 18
Jul 2019, MissRiaElaine remarked:

I have a landline installed but it’s never had a telephone connected to it.
In the previous place I lived, I did have a telephone connected, and the
only calls I ever received were for previous users of that number.

If you have a landline, surely it's cheaper to use it for calls than a
mobile..? For us, it's still cheaper to use our landline than a mobile.
As I said, a mobile is an emergency device for us, 99.9% of the calls
we make can wait until we're home.

ObRail: Most of the calls I get from the family's mobiles are "I'm at
the station five miles away, the train's been cancelled, can you come
and pick me up". Which by definition *can't* wait until they get home!!

Or when I'm out and get a call on the mobile: "Can you pick up X at the
shop", which can't wait until *I* get home.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 19:31:24 on Thu, 18
Jul 2019, MissRiaElaine remarked:

I really do wonder what all these people I see walking along the street
with their heads buried in their so-called "smart" phones are doing.

I'm usually checking whether the train I'm trying to catch is running on
time. It'd be checking the buses, if we had any useful ones where I live
at the moment.

Sometimes I might be looking at Facebook/Twitter, which although some
scoff is simply the latest way to share things with small groups of
people [who these days mainly aren't on Usenet].

Today I'll be looking for an SMS with a magic code to "Click and
Collect" something I bought online [PC not phone] earlier in the week.
But admittedly, a candybar phone would be just as good for that.

"Waiting till I got home" to find the equivalent on a postcard in the
letterbox, would be a bit late.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 19:31:24 on Thu, 18
Jul 2019, MissRiaElaine remarked:
On 18/07/2019 15:18, Roland Perry wrote:

Networks have tried hard over the years to introduce their equivalent
of "standing charges" to fight back a little bit. One I'll be writing
about later (in more detail) in another subthread, is the O2
requirement that PAYG phones wanting to use the tube Wifi are topped
up at least once a month.

A standing charge equals a contract. Making someone top up monthly is
effectively forcing them onto one in all but name.

It's a slight discount, because the typical top-up would be £10 and the
typical contract £30.

A £30 monthly contract will usually include the phone as well, so you can't
compare it with a PAYG top-up. You need to compare the latter with SIM-only
contracts, and they're typically around £10pm. So PAYG only works out
cheaper if you don't top up every month.

And because you can stop any time you like (apart
from some more recent hybrid plans that include a partly-subsidised
phone) it's not in any sense a "contract".

MissRiaElaine wrote:
On 18/07/2019 22:32, Anna Noyd-Dryver wrote:

I have a landline installed but it’s never had a telephone connected to it.
In the previous place I lived, I did have a telephone connected, and the
only calls I ever received were for previous users of that number.

If you have a landline, surely it's cheaper to use it for calls than a
mobile..?

I make voice calls so rarely that I’ve never reached the end of my included
minutes. My current tariff includes unlimited calls in any case; I’ve used
43 minutes in the last month!

For us, it's still cheaper to use our landline than a mobile.
As I said, a mobile is an emergency device for us, 99.9% of the calls we
make can wait until we're home.

We're now on the O2 classic PAYG, no monthly top-up required, just a
call or text every 6 months. 3p/min for calls, 2p/text and 1p/MB data
(which never gets used as the 6310i doesn't do this new-fangled interweb..!)

My other half once made £20 last 4 years..! I've not quite done that,
but I've come close. Why spend money you don't have to..? We might
possibly be able to do without a landline if we didn't need broadband,
but since we do, and we get inclusive calls at a good price, it makes
sense to use it rather than spend oodles on a mobile contract.


I use a lot of mobile data when I’m out and about - on the bus, travelling
by train, sitting in the park, on breaks at work etc. Mostly it’s social
media, maps, messaging and web browsing, including uploading photographs of
days out etc. My laptop often doesn’t get switched on from one month to the
next, I do almost everything I would have used that for, on my phone now.


Anna Noyd-Dryver

On 19/07/2019 00:21, Recliner wrote:

One of the current major advantages of mobile contracts is that your
monthly allowances can be used anywhere in the EU. So if you travel
frequently to EU countries, as I do, those included mobile minutes, texts
and data are more useful than any land line equivalents. Whether that will
continue post-Brexit, I have no idea.

Hmmm, ok, horses for courses I suppose. We never travel to the EU. If I
go anywhere, it's the US, where I buy a local PAYG SIM for the duration
of my stay. Our landline package charges to the US at 2p/min so not
expensive to ring from home to the US mobile number.


--
Ria in Aberdeen

[Send address is invalid, use sipsoup at gmail dot com to reply direct]