Completing on the purchase of our house in Canada on 26th July and hope to move for good shortly after that.

I am just a bit unclear on phone landlines in Canada. My Canadian buddy doesn't have a home phone and relies on his mobile and yet he has an internet router at his house. How do you do this and what is the score on landline rental etc.?

As ex-UK people will know, in the UK, you virtually have to have a conventional 'house phone' as you have to pay for line rental anyway to have any internet provision. I am just wondering how it works in Canada.

Move is to a well serviced small town and established neighbourhood to the south of Ottawa, so not in the boonies!

Lots of people appear to get by on a cell phone or 3. I don't really know how that works when, say, bank card activation services say to call from a landline - though admittedly that need is not often.

We have a bundle for TV, Internet (both fibre-op/wi-fi) and landline phone. The bundle price without the phone is $18 which makes the phone service cheap.

It is technically possible to have internet - via cable, either copper or, increasingly, fibre optic - and not have seperate phone service. I have fibre to the home & the phone line & tv run over the internet effectively even though I pay for a bundle of all three services. So high speed internet - perhaps with a VOIP service or just using skype/facetime etc can replace landline. Plus people are increasingly just using their mobile phones and negating the need for a landline.

Couple of problems with that in reality though. Firstly mobile phone packages are horribly expensive here in Canada compared to the UK. Varies from province to province but essentially nationally there is a duopoly of Bell and Rogers with little competition. Similarly, the bundle prices for TV/Internet/Home Phone are often priced such that they are more attractive than internet only. From the service providers perspective if you have the bundles of TV etc they have more opportunity to upsell you on extra channel packages (Sports, Movies, HBO etc). From the consumers perspective all one really needs is good highspeed internet. From there you can get all the TV/Movies/Music/Radio/Voice and Video communication you could possibly need.

I have internet and TV only without a landline via cable. Use the mobile phone for calls where required, which isn't often.

Dry DSL if you don't want tv, standard 'internet and tv package' if you do.

We have a landline through our cable company who also provides TV and internet, the phone line is like $8/month for unlimited calling including the US, so it's cheaper then a 2nd cell phone which would run $40 or so per month + cost of buying a phone.

Even when a card or bill says call from landline or home phone, I have never had the automated system reject me because I called from another phone or a cell phone.

Off topic I know but it reminded me of this 'internet providings' sketch

Hey, now that you've moved how is your internet? I remember you said something once about how one movie on Netflix used up your monthly limit...or something like that.

We haven't had a landline for 4 1/2 years. The only reason we had one before is because there was no cell coverage where we lived.
We use our cell phones for activating bank cards or any other "things" we would usually have used a landline in the past for.
It seems a really strange idea these days that there would be an actual phone attached to the house. Very weird concept!

Yep we have that weird concept due to crappy coverage down one end of the house -and no Bristol, we don't live in a house the size of Blenheim Palace, before you ask We have to be contactable 24/7 if on call.

We have a landline phone through Telus (the BC telephone company)

Cable for TV and high speed internet through Shaw

We could combine everything together with either Telus OR Shaw, but just keep them separate ..... basically I just can't be bothered to sort out which is better than the other!



so, to answer the OP ...............

it is perfectly possible to have high speed internet without having a landline phone if that is what you wish to do.

I don't remember when I last lived in a house with a working landline, maybe 3 houses and 15 years ago. The internet used to be by satellite and is now by line-of-sight dish

Thanks for the replies and very helpful information people!

I now find out from the current owners that they have Rogers cable in the property already. They do have a Bell satellite dish and wiring but switched from that a year ago. Apparently Bell are due to put fibre in the neighbourhood, but there is no fixed date for that yet.

So looks like a Rogers bundle might be best. Only want a basic TV package.

Generally Bell Fibre > Rogers Cable internet but both are equally painful to deal with.

I would do a trial before committing. We ditched TV years ago and just stream from CBC and Netflix. So little on cable, folks are ditching it in droves.