Internet Telephone

Traditional landlines are starting to be replaced with internet-based telephony also known as Voice over Internet Protocol- VoIP. Using an internet connection to provide the telephone service rather than a physical telephone line.

Call charges are typically much lower than traditional land lines, and as there is no need for a dedicated line, the ongoing monthly charges are usually less too; you can even keep your existing phone number and use your existing telephone.

VoIP calling and its features have previously only been available to larger businesses but now Borders Online can offer various standard tariffs to suit most requirements or we can provide bespoke solutions please contact us to enquire.

Below is a guide to some of the terminology used:

• VoIP Line

Equivalent to a normal telephone line, but it's presented over your internet connection rather than down a physical cable from a pole on the street. This means you can quickly add additional lines without needing a visit from an engineer to bring a new cable to your house.

• Telephone Numbers

All our VoIP lines come with a standard UK phone number, you can't pick the whole number, but you can pick the prefix for example 0131, 01968, 01875 etc

Some of our packages include 'number porting'; which means you can transfer your existing landline number to the VoIP line if you wish. Perfect for businesses or those not wanting to change their number.

You can even have multiple numbers on the same line; London, Paris and Peebles, or maybe you only want one phone in the house but with both a work and personal number on it. Just let us know the prefixes you are looking for and we can check availability for you. Generally, we can get numbers for the majority of UK exchanges and some international numbers as well.

• VoIP Converters/Handsets

The traditional telephone handset expects to be plugged into a telephone line so to get things to work, you will need either a VoIP converter or a new handset.

VoIP converters plug into the internet router, and provide a normal phone port, to plug in the existing handset. With the exception of the Pure tariff Borders Online supply the adaptor.

A VoIP handset has the electronics built in and so plugs directly into your broadband router. VoIP handsets come in all sorts of shapes, styles and colours. Office style fixed phones, wireless handsets, conference room style phones and even things that look more like mobile phones. We can advise on models we know work well, based on our experiences, or you can supply your own.

• Call Costs

VoIP calls are generally much cheaper than those offered through traditional land line providers.

Some of our packages come with bundled calls - these generally cover calls to UK landlines and the top 4 UK mobile networks (Vodafone, O2, EE and Three). Other calls will be billed to you on a monthly basis, just like a normal phone provider.

We can't publish a full list of all call charges here, as they are commercially sensitive; but if you have specific questions, let us know. Existing Borders Online internet customers have access to a call charge lookup facility in the customer portal.

• Emergency Services

You can call 999 or other emergency services from a VoIP phone. As part of the set-up process, we register your new number against the address so in the event of a call, the emergency services come to the right place.

But please note:

If you move and continue to use the service, you need to tell us, so we can update your records.

In the event of a power cut, you will not have an internet service, so your VoIP phone will not work. We therefore recommend that our customers have an alternative means of calling the emergency services. If you don't have a good mobile signal at home, or rely on Wi-Fi calling, then it's prudent to keep the landline. We want our customers to be safe first and foremost.

• Other Services

Our VoIP tariffs are packages we have put together that we think will cover most customers’ requirements; but there's plenty of space for customisation:

• Automatic call recording
• Additional telephone numbers (including international ones)
• Multiple concurrent calls on the same number
• Forwarding to other numbers out of hours

For those customers with more complex requirements, we can offer services to setup a custom PBX for you or your business.

• Multiple extensions
• Voicemail to email services
• Conference call numbers
• Interactive voice prompts

Contact Us for more details.