Choosing a Home Phone Deal

With so many alternatives on the market place – such as Internet calls and mobile phones – it has long been said that the home phone is on the decline. Whilst it may be true that the number of households without a traditional home phone connection may be increasing they are still the tiny minority, meaning that a working landline is still a must have for most UK consumers.

However, just because it is still a necessity for most of us doesn’t mean that it’s easy to find the best deals, with the primary advertising space always given over to the combined Landline and Broadband Deals.

Cheapest Line Rental

Unless you make a lot of calls by far the biggest expense of your home phone deal is the monthly line rental. This can be anything up to £14 or £15 a month, with BT’s standard monthly charge coming in at £13.80. However, a bit of shopping around can get this much cheaper, currently the cheapest landline rental is from Primus at just £6.79 a month.

Call Costs

These can vary massively with many different packages often available from each Provider, meaning the number of landline deals on the market is huge. Each package will target a different type of user so it’s important to know when you make your calls. Pull out your last bill and see if you make your calls in the evenings/at weekends or during the day.

Who are you calling? If you make a lot of international calls then look for the packages that offer discounts to the countries you’re calling. You pay a little more for the monthly package cost so make sure you work out whether you’ll get an overall saving.

Landline and Broadband

With providers keen to sign up customers for more than one product, there are a number of combined Landline and Broadband Deals on the market. They can offer great value, offering big discounts to take both services. But make sure you’re not taking a Hone Phone package that you don’t want just to get a Broadband feature that you don’t need. They may be offering a faster download speed than you currently have but may find it won’t be the cheapest line rental available.

Chargeable Extras

Make sure you check the small print of what is and what isn’t included in the quoted price. These days most providers will allow you to keep costs down by discarding services you don’t want (like a paper bill every month). However if you do need a special service then check these out in advance as these can really push up the cost of your home phone.