SultanOfSwing

I wonder if this will change as people start to get rid of landlines in favour of their mobiles.

Or is that just a US thing? Seems like all we have our landline for (now that Skype and facebook video chat have rendered calls home all but obsolete) is so that spammers can call us.

Steerpike

The UK has a fundamentally different way of charging for mobile calls, that may be the key limitation. I prefer the US model, where the caller pays the same regardless of the 'mode' of delivery (and the receiver of the call pays for the airtime if it's a mobile number), but I know a lot of people here feel differently, and like the fact that in UK, you don't pay for airtime as the RECEIVER a mobile call. In UK, you pay less to call a landline and more to call a mobile. In today's world of 'unlimited minutes', this seems rather irrelevant. But I'm surprised there hasn't been a 'demand' for landline number mobility in the UK, because everyone I know has gotten rid of their landline.

SultanOfSwing

Yeah, I guess I'm spoiled by my unlimited minutes mobile plan. Not sure if we get a charge for using the landline above and beyond our monthly fee and international plan, but I can't remember the last time I actually used it.

mrken30

A lot of US plans now have unlimited minutes for both outgoing an incoming. A lot of UK plans have unlimited or high number of minutes on outgoing calls to both cell and landlines.
As far as I know there are very few, if any landline plans that include cell phone minutes.

Steerpike

Where this really manifests itself is if you call a UK mobile (vs landline) from US. I have a 'calling card' deal that gives me massive amounts of minutes to UK - I can talk for hours and hours and hours for next to nothing. BUT - if I call a mobile in UK rather than a landline, the minutes remaining drop like flies ... it seems to be 10x more to call a mobile than a landline (not sure of the exact difference, but it's not trivial).

mrken30

We had a 4 digit number until they upgraded the exchange to system x, then we went to 6 digits

mrken30

Calls to the US are included in a lot of UK plans now (Sky), but calls to cell phones are still 10p to 20p per minute https://www.gov.uk/call-charges . I don't understand why is costs so much more to call someone in the same town compare to someone 5000 miles away.

https://www.gov.uk/call-charges

chawkins99

We used to have Vonage purely for calling the UK. We dropped it in favour of using my cell phone on AT&T. For the amount we call the UK, it made more sense.
When I got a company cell phone, we dropped AT&T and switched my wife to StraightTalk. Costs $45/month for unlimited everything and added a $10 International calling card which gives us UK calls for 1.8c/minute. It's now over a year and we still have a positive balance on the card.
Only real downside to StraightTalk is they don't allow tethering.

mrken30

You can purchase a "follow me" number which cost even more than cell phones to call.

SultanOfSwing

Nowadays instead of calling home, I'll usually just set up a call over Skype instead. I used to use the landline to call home (and receive calls from home) almost weekly when my mum was still alive. I'll still call my dad but he's really bad at remembering to call me.

mrken30

We switched to lycamobile which gives us unlimited US everything and 1000 UK landline minutes a month. Cell phones are 5c per min. Quite cheap at $17.29 a month. You do have to supply your own phone. We could also call UK lycamobile cell phones for free if I could get my family to switch. I do still have vonage at $12 to $13 a month, which I could probably give up. Comes in useful sometimes though having a UK number and being able to make a receive UK CLI calls. Some phone numbers in the UK don't accept calls from non UK numbers.

chawkins99

I mostly call my mother who's 82 so Skype ain't gonna work. Unfortunately, I rarely speak to my father as he's deaf as a post.

SultanOfSwing

My mum was a fair bit younger, so she took to Skype pretty quickly as a nice way for her to be able to see us a bit more often as well as talk to us. Though her laptop was a bit glitchy so she still called on the phone more often.

That was really the only reason we kept our landline though, for calling home.

Steerpike

I use my 'calling card' (which is just a pin code) almost exclusively to call my 85 year old mum, who wouldn't know Skype if it hit her on the head (she sadly refuses to touch anything remotely associated with technology). I also tend to call her on long drives using my cell, since it's not the most exciting of calls ... but I do manage to natter away to her for a good 30-60 minutes each week ... as long as I have a commute in my life! I can't do those kinds of calls from home as I'm always far too distracted.

I just looked it up - I'm paying 2c/min for UK landline calls, with no connection fee and no expiration. I dump in $50 about once a year, and thus have 2,500 minutes to use - 41 hours. The cell rate is 'only' 4c/min - less than I remember, so it's probably come down. I like the fact there's no monthly, and the minutes never expire. All the 'codes' are programmed into my phone so I just press one button and get my mum.

SultanOfSwing

My mum was always surprisingly good at adopting technology, but then again she was only 60 when I moved as opposed to in her 80s.

That's not too bad a rate. I can't remember what our international rate is, but I think it's around 3c/min or so, so yours is definitely more than competitive.