I have my broadband and land line from a little company in UK called BT. Yesterday my land line went down.......totally zilch, even when plugging the phone straight into the first socket in the system without a broadband micro filter, and yet as you can see I am still able to use the adsl side of the line.

Has anyone ever heard of a problem like this?

Of course BT cannot fix the problem till at least Tuesday, even though they admit the fault is probably at their local thingy.

Haven't heard of it.

But if you have certain important people u (need to) call often and you want to avoid probs with phonelines u could use a voice over ip program. That way you can call people over the internet. An additional benefit is that you won't have to pay for the time ur on the phone.

Only thing required is that both people in the conversation have the program on their computer as well as (obviously) having a mic hooked to their computer.

Yes I have been looking at 2 options offered by BT.

With one option you actually get a 2nd phone line, but one which you use on your PC, with a 2nd phone connected through a router. With  this option you pay for phone calls, but they offer good rates, far cheaper for international calls than the option I have at the mo.

The other is as you state, but you can only talk to people who have the same.

Decisions, decisions.

word of caution.    A very big consideration when going to voice over  is total failure of outside communication when power fails.

Land line phones tend to work when all else fails.  I have the unfortune to live in rural area that is prone to occassional power outages.  Outages have sometimes lasted as long as 14 days when hurricane or an ice storm has struck. How can u report power outage without phone service?  Cell phones are a help.

when power falls u still have ur cellphone ;-) or in my case, 2 of 'em.

I'd second the celly option. In some places, those are now cheaper than land lines. (Not to mention they're nice for people who haven't quite settled down to one place yet.)

Ofcourse a cell also means u're on standby 24/7 so dont forget to turn it off or on silent mode at night 'cuz it aint fun when someone from the other side of the world calls u outta ur sleep just to go "oops, sorry, I picked the wrong name outta my phonelist. I didn't call u outta bed did I?". Ofcourse u could tell 'em "nah I'm still in it." but it doesnt get u ur sleep back hahaha :tongue1:

With BT anything is possible. Just don't forget that they used to make £100 per second PROFIT in the 80's which was something like the most any brit company ever made at the time. I think the phrase 'rip-off' was coined with the BT in mind.

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