Mobile Phone vs Landline - Which is better?

How often do you use your home landline telephone these days? Perhaps once or twice a month to call the bank, or briefly every other every Sunday to call relatives?

If this scenario rings true with you, then it’s likely that your home phone connection is costing you money unnecessarily.

Now could be the perfect time to save money by cutting your home phone connection and becoming one of the growing numbers of mobile-only UK households.

Replacing a landline with a mobile phone

Before you do anything rash, it’s important to consider if a mobile-only household is right for you.

Ask yourself the following:

• How many times each week do you use your home phone?
• How long, on average, do you use the phone for each call?
• Are you still bound by a contract or home phone cancellation fee?

For example, if you’re on BT’s standard home phone package - which costs £13.60 per month - and only make five short calls each month, each call is costing an average of £2.72. That’s more than a premium rate phone line!

That quick calculation has its drawbacks though, as friends and family can call you on your landline - using free packages and many people feel reassured by having a landline installed for emergencies.

But by relying solely on your mobile phone connection and comparing mobile phone deals online, you can find a monthly mobile contract costing as little as £10 per month - less than the cost of BT’s standard line rental.

Compare mobile phone deals and save.

Broadband without a phone line

Technical reasons means broadband internet is one of the major reasons people have a phone line installed at home, so it’s vital you consider how you’d access all your favourite online services and websites without a telephone line pumping broadband into your house.

“Mobile broadband dongles” and “Mi-Fi” units let you connect a PC or laptop to the internet without using a traditional broadband connection delivered by telephone line - click here to discover more about mobile broadband.

You can keep surfing costs down by subscribing to a monthly mobile broadband packages - these start from around £2 per month. But it’s worth noting that your monthly use will probably be capped - perhaps to 1GB per month - and speeds will likely be slower than you’re used to - not the ideal choice if you watch catch-up TV online.

If the mere mention of slower broadband speeds have you running for the hills then you could consider a fibre optic Virgin Media bundle, which offers TV, phone and broadband as part of one competitively priced package.

Things to consider when cancelling your landline

A mobile-only home will still keep on connected to all the same people, businesses and services that it did when connected to a traditional telephone.

Most mobile phone packages include plenty of talk minutes and can even be tailored to your needs with, for example, bolt-on packages of extra minutes or a foreign calls allowance.

However, there are a few things you need to be aware of before cutting off your landline connection:

• Freephone and non-geographical numbers: Most mobile networks won’t let you call 0800 and 0845 numbers - often used by banks, et al - for free from a mobile phone. However, some networks do give you unlimited calls to such numbers for a small extra monthly fee
• Network coverage: If you live in an area of poor network coverage then replacing your landline may mean you don’t always receive enough mobile phone signal to make and receive telephone calls. However, cheap devices are available that help boost your mobile signal while at home

Galaxy Ace S5830(black) £0.00	100 min 500 texts	£10.50
iPhone 4S (16GB)(white) £0.00	300 min Unlimited texts	£31.00
iPhone 4S (16GB)(white) £0.00	1200 min Unlimited texts	£51.00
iPhone 4S (16GB)(black) £0.00	300 min Unlimited texts	£31.00
Lumia 800(white) £0.00	300 min 3000 texts	£36.00

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