Escaping Vodafone One-Net?!

[goldnet]

My firm is at the end of a VF One-Net contract. Quality has been inadequate and no-one has ever worked out how to use the landline/mobile switching. We'll be delighted to move on to whatever best iPhone mobiles deal we can find and pop the landline onto a real one. We only have one number, our published 'switchboard' number (used maybe 3-4 calls out/1-2 calls in a day). It's a VF virtual landline and no-one can give me a definite answer as to whether we can port it to our physical landline (a re-sold Gamma line running a poor, slow, capped Broadband service).

All I want to do is port the voice line to the physical line, buy a decent calls package or provider and then move my broadband to a mainstream provider.

Spent over 3 hours with BT this week told in sequence, yes - no problem/no outage; yes - no problem/2 day outage and no - we can't touch that/impossible.

My current provider says they can do this but we need to install a new landline to achieve it. They cannot explain why they can't port the number to the existing line.

Though low volume, I want a genuine landline for call quality and for resilience if mobiles fail.

Can anyone give an informed opinion?

Thanks for any help.

 

[MikeJ]

If the volume is low, port it to Voipfone and redirect it to the landline. 1p per minute for diversions and £2 per month line rental.

 

[maxine]

As MikeJ says ... voipfone.co.uk

They are a member on here and I've used them a lot with clients because of the flexibility of what you can do and on a pay as you go basis so if you want to change the set up you can do so easily and see how it works for you.

I was actually looking at One-Net with real interest last week to see if I could use it here ourselves but decided against it as I wanted to be able to add other things such as call queue, call groups where calls ring all at once to mobiles rather than in turn etc.

I'm pretty sure you can 'port' your number to another voip service provider not just to a landline.

The quality should be good enough for calls and data through a broadband service (I use a lot and some people work from home where their broadband is pretty poor) but if you find it deteriorates you can always divert at number number level, via the control panel to divert to a landline. Or, you can split out data and calls but that's never been necessary for me.

Hope that helps.

 

[goldnet]

Thanks, both, for your replies.

Actually, it took a complaint to BT Chairman Office to establish that porting the virtual number (what BT term an IPEX number) to a fixed line is even feasible. Turns out that it is but has only very recently become so. They are doing it for me but it is being managed at a very senior level to ensure those involved actually know what they are doing - involves installing a brand new line (no charge) and porting the number to that, then bringing the BB over from my existing fixed line, which I will then discontinue.

I assume porting it to a VOIP line would have been more straightforward, as it's virtual-virtual then.

I don't want to go down that route on this occasion because we want to be sure of best possible voice quality on this line (for calls from abroad from callers for whom English is a 2nd or 3rd language) and as we run all our business over a standard ADSL connection, wanted to avoid any compromise of bandwidth.

I will certainly investigate Voipfone as a future option, though.

Thanks