Switching broadband without a landline: what you give up, and the one month that decides it

The short version, before you cancel anything

Direct answer: Going broadband-only is not a switch, it is a cessation. You are not moving a phone number somewhere else, you are letting it go, and two of the largest providers publish that you will not get it back.

Almost every guide to this subject, including the version of this one we have just replaced, treats going landline-free as a shopping decision: here are the products, here is what they cost, here is which suits you. That is a reasonable way to write a page and it skips the only part of the decision that cannot be taken back.

Ending a line is not the same as switching one. When you switch, everything moves with you. When you end it, some things stop, and one of them stops permanently unless you act inside a window almost nobody is told about.

So this page covers five things, in the order that matters rather than the order guides list them, and hands everything else to whichever page already owns it. The migration itself is in our digital voice and switch-off guide. Moving a number to another provider is in our phone number guide. The products are in our broadband-only deals page and the technologies in our full fibre, FTTC, cable and 5G comparison.

What is left, and what nothing else on this site covers, is the cessation itself. It is worth being precise about why that is a different subject rather than a corner of the same one. A switch is a transfer: the account moves, the number moves, the service continues and if you dislike the result you switch again. A cessation ends something, and two of the five things it ends do not come back on request. The device on the line comes back only if its supplier has a replacement. The number comes back only inside a window.

That asymmetry is why the order of operations matters so much more here than it does in an ordinary switch, and why this page spends its length on sequence rather than on products. If the number matters to anybody, move it to a voice service you have chosen before you cancel anything, and if you have already cancelled you have one month to ask.

The month nobody mentions

Direct answer: “If you have already cancelled your previous landline service, you can still ask to keep your phone number for free, as long as you ask within one month of cancelling.”

That is Ofcom, on its own consumer page, published 27 February 2017 and last updated 25 August 2026. It is the most useful sentence in this subject and it appears on none of the seven provider pages we read for this guide.

What those pages say instead is the opposite, and they are not wrong. BT: “You'll lose your home phone number and your home phone will no longer work.” And more specifically: “You won't be able to get your home phone number back. You'll have to get a brand new number if you decide you need a home phone in the future.” Plusnet, which sells nothing but broadband-only and therefore says this to every customer: “You will lose your home phone number and will not be able to get it back.” Its next sentence is BT’s again, word for word: “You'll have to get a brand new number if you decide you need a home phone in the future.”

Neither is wrong, and the reason both can stand is that they answer different questions. A provider is telling you what it will do: it will not put your old number back on a broadband-only plan, because a broadband-only plan has nowhere to put it. Ofcom is telling you what any provider must do: for a month after you cancel, a company you are joining can still bring the number with you. The first is a fact about a product. The second is a right.

The trouble is which of the two you are reading at the moment you decide. You decide on the ordering page, and the ordering page is the one that says the number is gone.

How to use the month, and how not to need it

The better plan is not to need it. Decide where the number is going before you cancel where it is, order the new service with the port as part of it, and cancel the old one afterwards. Ofcom is specific about who to ask: “Ask your new provider when you sign up.” The request goes to the company you are joining, not the one you are leaving, which catches people out because the instinct is to ring the provider you are cross with.

If you have already cancelled, the month is running and it started on the day you cancelled rather than the day the service stops. Ring a provider now. Any provider that sells a voice service can take it, and it does not have to be the same company you are taking broadband from.

One thing worth being clear about: none of this applies if you are keeping a phone service at all. BT publishes that on a move to digital voice “Yes, you'll be able to keep your current phone number, this won't be affected by the switch to Digital Voice.” It is only ceasing the voice service entirely that starts the clock, and our phone number guide covers the ordinary porting case in detail.

What else is on that line

Direct answer: “Healthcare alarms, medical pendants, security systems and any other services which are connected to your home phone will no longer work”

That is Plusnet, and it is the bluntest sentence any provider in this programme has published about anything. It comes before the number question in this guide for one reason, which is that every other row on this page is about money or convenience and this one is not.

The others say the same thing more gently and all of them put the responsibility on you. BT: “If you have a telecare or healthcare alarm or a burglar alarm, it may not be supported on Digital Voice. Please consult your service provider to confirm it's compatible before you move to Digital Voice.” Vodafone: “Anything that uses your telephone wiring, such as Telecare devices, or monitored alarms such as smoke and security alarms, might not work with Digital Voice.” EE: “This option is not suitable if you have specialist equipment such as telecare linked to your current landline.” Note the pattern. Every one of them tells you to ask somebody else, which is reasonable, because none of them made the alarm. It does mean the phone call is yours to make and nobody will make it for you.

Why the responsibility lands on you

It is worth saying plainly, because it surprises people. Your broadband provider does not know what is plugged into your phone line and has no way of finding out. The line carries whatever you have attached to it, the alarm company has a contract with you rather than with them, and the two businesses have no reason to have spoken. So the check is yours to make, and nobody will make it on your behalf or stop the order while you think about it.

The practical consequence is that this conversation happens before the ordering one rather than during it. An alarm supplier may need to visit, may need to send a replacement unit, and may have a waiting list. Found out in advance that is a scheduling problem. Found out afterwards it is a household with no working alarm and a broadband order already in flight.

The things people forget

A care alarm or pendant is the one everybody thinks of. The ones that catch people out are a monitored burglar or fire alarm, which may still make a noise while quietly no longer telling anybody, and in older buildings a lift emergency phone or a door entry system. None of them announces itself and all of them dial out through the same line.

If the person this affects is not you, that changes the job rather than the answer. Our guide to switching broadband for an elderly parent or relative covers doing this on somebody else's behalf, and our broadband for pensioners guide covers telecare in depth.

What you would be giving up

Direct answer: Three questions. Five things at stake, sorted into what you lose and what you keep, with the rule behind each quoted.

It sorts by consequence rather than by price, and it asks about the device on the line before it asks about anything else, because that is the order the answers actually matter in. Where something is not known the checker says to find out rather than guessing.

It runs entirely in your browser. There is no form to submit, nothing sent to any server and nothing stored: what you answer here is used on this page and gone when you close the tab. Every rule it quotes was read on the publishing body's own site on 30 September 2026.

The order to do this in

Direct answer: The sequence is the whole of the advice, and only one step in it has a deadline attached.

The sequence costs nothing and getting it wrong costs the one thing on this page you cannot buy back. It is also not obvious, because the natural instinct is to cancel the thing you are stopping before you order the thing you are starting.

Why ordering first is safe

A household that orders before it cancels worries about paying for two services at once. In practice the overlap is short and the port is usually part of the same order, so the two happen together rather than in sequence. Set against losing a number permanently, a fortnight of overlap is a cheap insurance policy.

If you want the full mechanics of a switch rather than a cessation, our broadband switch checklist is the page for that, and it is printable.

Where it is not available

Direct answer: “SOGEA is available to 98.5% of UK premises”

That figure is Openreach's own, published on 12 November 2025, and it is the one most guides round up. The product it describes is SOGEA: “SOGEA or Single Order Generic Ethernet Access, works over Openreach's existing Fibre-to-the-Cabinet network - but removes the need for a traditional phone line (PSTN).” Almost everywhere is not everywhere, and the difference is about one premises in sixty seven.

On full fibre and on cable the question does not arise, because there is no phone line to remove. Virgin Media publishes why: “All our broadband deals come with no line rental cost, including our broadband only option. This is because we don't use telephone wires in the makeup of our broadband network.” Its definition of the product is equally short: “Broadband only means deals with no landline or TV.”

On a copper line it depends on the product, and TalkTalk publishes both halves. “Our Full Fibre plans are data-only, so you get superfast Wi-Fi without needing a phone line.” And the limit: “If only part-fibre broadband is available, you'll need a landline as part of your package.” So a household that can only get part-fibre may find the landline is not optional with that provider, whatever the network can technically do.

And one provider that appears not to sell it

Sky's own shop page says: “All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard.” We found no Sky package without a landline. It also publishes that “For full fibre and some part fibre broadband products, Sky Talk is provided as internet calls as standard.” That is a different thing again: the calls travel over the internet, and the landline rental is still in the package. A household set on dropping the line entirely should establish that before it shortlists rather than after.

Six of the seven will sell a household broadband with no phone service, and they arrive at it from different directions. Plusnet is the purest case, because broadband-only is the only thing it sells: its packages, in its own words, will not include any home phone options. Virgin Media is the easiest, because there was never a telephone wire to remove. TalkTalk depends entirely on which product reaches you.

BT and EE sit in the middle and they are worth telling apart. BT will move an existing customer onto a broadband-only plan on request, and publishes what that costs them. EE simply sells the phone as a separate thing: its own description of its broadband without the add-on is “You will have no dial tone and will not be able to make or receive calls, including calls to emergency services.” Vodafone lists a landline as optional on its packages while publishing elsewhere that it is moving all home phones to Digital Voice, which is not a contradiction so much as two departments describing two different timescales.

The route where none of this arises is the one with no line at all. Three publishes that “No landline? No problem. Our super-fast broadband is always landline-free.” It explains why on the same page: “Our 4G and 5G Home Broadband hubs don't require a landline as the routers use our mobile network.” Its published price for unlimited data on a twenty four month plan is £18.00 a month, rising to £21.50 from 1 April 2027 and £25.00 from 1 April 2028. Our 5G home broadband page covers that route properly.

Whether it saves anything

Direct answer: “There are some broadband-only packages out there, which don't include a landline service. But they generally don't cost less than a broadband and home phone bundle.”

That is Ofcom, on its own consumer page, and it is the flat opposite of what the guide this page replaces promised. That guide led with a saving of £15 to £25 a month, carried it as a headline statistic, repeated it in its own summary, and attributed it each time to a student accommodation business.

The reason is in the same Ofcom page, one paragraph up: “Line rental is not a charge for your home phone; it's really the cost of maintaining the wire (or 'line') that brings your broadband, landline and even some TV services into your home.” Read that twice, because it is the whole of the misunderstanding. Line rental is not what you pay for the phone. It is what you pay for the wire, and the wire is what brings the broadband. Removing the handset does not remove the wire.

There are two real exceptions and in both of them there is genuinely no wire. Ofcom: “If you use mobile or satellite broadband to connect to the internet at home, you won't be charged line rental.” And Virgin Media: “All our broadband deals come with no line rental cost, including our broadband only option. This is because we don't use telephone wires in the makeup of our broadband network.” Everywhere else, dropping the phone moves a charge rather than removing one.

It is worth understanding where the £15 to £25 figure comes from, because it is not invented either. There genuinely was a time when a household paid a separate line rental charge on top of a broadband price, and removing the phone removed a visible line from the bill. Since 2016 providers have not been allowed to advertise broadband and line rental separately, so the charge did not disappear, it stopped being itemised. A number that described a real saving in 2015 now describes a line on a bill that no longer exists.

Which is also why the comparison that matters is not broadband-only against your current bill. It is broadband-only against the same provider's equivalent package with a phone service included, at the same speed and the same term. Compared that way the gap is usually small, sometimes nothing, and occasionally the wrong way round.

What actually changes at the socket

Direct answer: “Your digital landline will work over a broadband connection. You will need to plug your phone into your broadband router, rather than directly into the wall socket.”

Two sentences from Ofcom, and that is the whole physical change for a household that keeps a phone. The handset is the same handset. What moves is which hole it goes into.

For a household that keeps no phone at all, the change is larger and EE describes it most plainly of the seven, talking about its own broadband without the phone add-on: “You will have no dial tone and will not be able to make or receive calls, including calls to emergency services.” BT says the same thing about going broadband-only: “You won't be able to make or receive calls, including to emergency services.” There is no dial tone in the house, and that is not a fault, it is the product.

Power cuts, and what each provider offers

Even with a phone service, a power cut is different from how it used to be. BT: “If there is a power cut or your broadband stops working, you will not be able to make calls using Digital Voice, including 999 calls.” It adds one thing worth asking about by name: “Customers who need extra support may be offered a backup unit so they can still make essential calls for a short time during an outage.” Read that sentence carefully: it is a discretionary offer to a defined group rather than something the household is entitled to, so the way to get one is to ask for it rather than wait for it.

Vodafone's published advice is blunter and shorter: “Your telephone connects to your router for Digital Voice, so if the router loses power, you won't be able to use your landline until it comes back on.” And: “you need to have a mobile phone with signal”. It adds separately that a backup power supply may be available. The practical question, for any household, is not whether somebody owns a mobile. It is whether that mobile has signal in the rooms people actually stand in.

None of this is new, and it is not a secret either. PSTN connections now account for less than one fifth of residential landline connections (19%). And “just over a million households ceased their landline in favour of a broadband-only service with their existing Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the year to July 2025”. A million households a year are making exactly this decision, which is the reason the number question is worth a page of its own.

What a provider will and will not tell you

Direct answer: Every page you order from is written by somebody describing their own product, which is not the same as somebody describing your decision.

That is not a complaint and it is not an accusation. It is the ordinary shape of the thing: BT writes about BT, Plusnet writes about Plusnet, and Ofcom writes about the market. What it means in practice is that the pages you read while deciding are systematically missing the parts that are not about the company writing them, and on this subject one of those parts is the month.

Read the seven providers together and the pattern is easy to see. Every one of them tells you what happens to its own service. None of them tells you what any provider must do for you. BT will move you to broadband-only and says so: “If you don't want to switch, or you no longer need a home phone, we can transfer you to a broadband only plan instead.” It also says what that costs you. What it does not say, because it is not BT's rule, is that somebody else could still take the number off your hands for a month afterwards.

The questions that get useful answers

Narrow questions get answers you can rely on and broad ones get marketing. Ask the provider you are joining rather than the one you are leaving, because that is who Ofcom says the porting request goes to, and ask in a chat window or by email so the answer is something you can point at later.

The first one is the question in the box further up, and it is the only one of these with a deadline attached. If the answer is no, ask whether the company sells any voice product that could take the number, because a cheap voice line is a great deal less trouble than losing a number a family has used for thirty years.

Then: is a phone service included in this package, optional, or not available? The answers genuinely differ. Vodafone lists a landline as optional. EE sells it as a separate paid add-on. Sky publishes that it is included as standard. Plusnet does not sell one at all. Those are four different products and they are all sold as broadband.

And, where it applies: I have a telecare device on the line, what do you need to know about it? That question tends to change who you are talking to, which is the point of asking it early rather than on the day of the switch.

What we could not find out

Direct answer: Five questions a reader would reasonably ask that nobody publishes an answer to.

Most guides on this subject fill those five gaps with a confident sentence, and a confident sentence about somebody else's unpublished policy is a guess. Publishing the gaps instead is less satisfying and it is the version that is still true next quarter.

What happens to the number after the month

Nothing is published. We looked in Ofcom's National Telephone Numbering Plan and in the General Condition on number portability, and found neither a quarantine period nor a recovery process, and no statement anywhere on Ofcom's site about whether a released number goes back into a pool, how long it sits there, or whether anybody could ever ask for it again. So this page tells you the right ends after a month and refuses to speculate about the day after that.

Whether One Touch Switch covers dropping the phone

Ofcom's switching rules describe moving services between providers at a fixed location. They say nothing about changing what is inside a package, which is what dropping the voice element is. We could find no statement either way, so this page does not tell you the process covers it and does not tell you it does not. What Ofcom does publish, about the mirror-image case, is that if you want to move your broadband and keep the landline where it is, you should check what your current provider says first.

What Sky does for a household that wants no landline

Sky's shop page publishes that landline rental is included as standard on all its broadband services, and we found no package without one. Its help section, where the answer would be, renders after the page arrives and returns headings with no body text, so we quote nothing from it. That is different from Sky publishing nothing, and a table that turned both into a tick or a cross would be inventing information.

Whether ordering broadband-only actually ceases the line

Openreach's ordering documentation lives on a portal that disallows crawling, so the network-side answer is not readable. What can be read is what each retailer publishes about its own customers, which is what this page quotes instead. In practice the retailers' wording is unambiguous about the outcome even where the mechanism is not published.

What a Vodafone 5G hub costs

This page quotes no Vodafone 5G Broadband price. Its published 12 and 24 month figures duplicate Three's to the penny, including both price-rise dates, which is the client-side duplication this programme has been caught by before. It is the second time this programme has hit the same duplication on the same pair of sites, which is why the rule now is simply not to print a figure from that page.

Broadband at your postcode

Direct answer: Check the exact address rather than the postcode, because what reaches it decides which of the five rows even apply.

Full fibre and cable never had a phone line. A copper connection can usually be sold without one, but not always. A mobile hub needs no line at all. Those are four different answers and only the address tells you which one is yours.

What this page used to say, and why it changed

Direct answer: Five corrections. Four are factual and the fifth is the reason the page was rebuilt rather than edited.

Two of the four were already published as corrections on this site's rural guide three weeks ago, which is the uncomfortable part: the same two errors were live on two pages at once. Publishing them here rather than quietly editing is the only way somebody who acted on the old version can tell whether they acted on something wrong.

In short

1. Going broadband-only is not a switch, it is a cessation. You are not moving a phone number somewhere else, you are letting it go, and two of the largest providers publish that you will not get it back.
2. BT: “You'll lose your home phone number and your home phone will no longer work.”
3. And: “You won't be able to get your home phone number back. You'll have to get a brand new number if you decide you need a home phone in the future.”
4. Plusnet publishes the same pair, the second of them word for word: “You will lose your home phone number and will not be able to get it back.” “You'll have to get a brand new number if you decide you need a home phone in the future.”
5. But Ofcom: “If you have already cancelled your previous landline service, you can still ask to keep your phone number for free, as long as you ask within one month of cancelling.”
6. And where to ask: “Ask your new provider when you sign up.”
7. Both of the two largest broadband brands tell you the number is gone for good. Ofcom publishes that you have a month to take it with you. Neither provider mentions the month.
8. On digital voice instead, BT: “Yes, you'll be able to keep your current phone number, this won't be affected by the switch to Digital Voice.”
9. And BT will move you either way: “If you don't want to switch, or you no longer need a home phone, we can transfer you to a broadband only plan instead.”
10. What else goes with the line, Plusnet: “Healthcare alarms, medical pendants, security systems and any other services which are connected to your home phone will no longer work”
11. BT: “If you have a telecare or healthcare alarm or a burglar alarm, it may not be supported on Digital Voice. Please consult your service provider to confirm it's compatible before you move to Digital Voice.”
12. Vodafone: “Anything that uses your telephone wiring, such as Telecare devices, or monitored alarms such as smoke and security alarms, might not work with Digital Voice.”
13. EE: “This option is not suitable if you have specialist equipment such as telecare linked to your current landline.”
14. And Sky, which does not accommodate it at all: “These products are not available to customers who are reliant on their landline for emergency services (i.e. do not have a mobile with good signal at home) or who have an emergency care alarm.”
15. Sky also publishes: “All our broadband services are inclusive of landline rental and Sky Pay As You Talk (£0pm) as standard.” “For full fibre and some part fibre broadband products, Sky Talk is provided as internet calls as standard.”
16. What broadband-only means at the socket, EE: “You will have no dial tone and will not be able to make or receive calls, including calls to emergency services.”
17. And BT: “You won't be able to make or receive calls, including to emergency services.”
18. In a power cut, BT: “If there is a power cut or your broadband stops working, you will not be able to make calls using Digital Voice, including 999 calls.”
19. With one offer attached: “Customers who need extra support may be offered a backup unit so they can still make essential calls for a short time during an outage.”
20. Vodafone: “Your telephone connects to your router for Digital Voice, so if the router loses power, you won't be able to use your landline until it comes back on.” “you need to have a mobile phone with signal”
21. Where it is available, Openreach: “SOGEA is available to 98.5% of UK premises”
22. What that product is: “SOGEA or Single Order Generic Ethernet Access, works over Openreach's existing Fibre-to-the-Cabinet network - but removes the need for a traditional phone line (PSTN).”
23. TalkTalk: “Our Full Fibre plans are data-only, so you get superfast Wi-Fi without needing a phone line.”
24. And the limit: “If only part-fibre broadband is available, you'll need a landline as part of your package.”
25. Virgin Media: “Broadband only means deals with no landline or TV.” “All our broadband deals come with no line rental cost, including our broadband only option. This is because we don't use telephone wires in the makeup of our broadband network.”
26. Three: “No landline? No problem. Our super-fast broadband is always landline-free.” “Our 4G and 5G Home Broadband hubs don't require a landline as the routers use our mobile network.”
27. This page quotes no Vodafone 5G Broadband price. Its published 12 and 24 month figures duplicate Three's to the penny, including both price-rise dates, which is the client-side duplication this programme has been caught by before.
28. Whether it saves anything, Ofcom: “There are some broadband-only packages out there, which don't include a landline service. But they generally don't cost less than a broadband and home phone bundle.”
29. And why: “Line rental is not a charge for your home phone; it's really the cost of maintaining the wire (or 'line') that brings your broadband, landline and even some TV services into your home.”
30. The one exception Ofcom names: “If you use mobile or satellite broadband to connect to the internet at home, you won't be charged line rental.”
31. The guide this page replaces promises a saving of £15 to £25 a month and attributes it to a student accommodation business. Ofcom's own page says broadband-only generally does not cost less.
32. Whose deadline it is, Ofcom: “BT plans to retire its old landline network by 31 January 2027.”
33. Openreach: “The PSTN switch-off is now just six months away and there is no extension to the deadline.”
34. And what is left: “There are currently around three million lines that need to be upgraded to digital alternatives before the deadline”
35. What actually changes: “Your digital landline will work over a broadband connection. You will need to plug your phone into your broadband router, rather than directly into the wall socket.”
36. How far along it is: “PSTN connections now account for less than one fifth of residential landline connections (19%).”
37. And how many are doing exactly this: “just over a million households ceased their landline in favour of a broadband-only service with their existing Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the year to July 2025”
38. The charter the replaced page miscredited: “This Telecoms Consumer Charter sets out a clear and strong commitment from industry to deliver great outcomes for consumers across the UK.”
39. Published by government, not Ofcom, and “By developing additional voluntary commitments, industry and government are working together to ensure that progress continues”
40. If the number matters to anybody, move it to a voice service you have chosen before you cancel anything, and if you have already cancelled you have one month to ask.

Each line stands on its own and carries its date. Reviewed by a person at least quarterly, last on 30 September 2026.