Just out of curiosity, do many people have Telstra Home Phone connections purely for the internet? At my previous place I had one, but the phone was never plugged in. I just had it for the internet.
If this is you, is there a reason why you didn't choose naked internet over this?
Same, my area does not have access to any naked adsl deals… we only have access to Telstra in my area. Switching over to Internode but i don't think they could offer naked adsl to us either =(
Same here stop have have phone plug in 5 years back only play for ADSL part biggest scam thank god I am on 23.00 line rental one
Don't take this the wrong way: Cant get naked in the bush…
In Dubbo, so bundled with Belong although planning on changing to Spintel this month.
Have had a phoneline for 6 years in 3 states and yet to plug a phone into any of them.
yup. have a Belong connection.
bundle deal. no use of phone.
edit: I was mistaken
yes Telstra make me have it, don't want it
If this is you, is there a reason why you didn't choose naked internet over this?
I am 'you'.
Still maintaining a Telstra landline phone, with laziness/stupidity the only real excuses - not even once have I bothered to look into VOIP services, which is ridiculous.
Very occasional outgoing calls made when aware said calls will likely end-up on-hold or be otherwise lengthy. Otherwise/otherwise, unlimited calls and text plans on mobile.
Also paying Telstra almost nine bucks extra a quarter for a silent number / the 'privilege' of not being included in the bloody white pages.
Kindly excuse me while I relinquish my OzBargain membership / shoot myself.
yes, ditto on all the above.
Actually got around to ALMOST signing up with Belong, but they don't do private numbers. Not sure if anyone else does… ??? Sigh…
when I looked into Naked it was always around the same as a line plus plan.
When I signed up on my TPG 500GB plan a few years back, the price for landline + internet worked out cheaper than naked internet. Back then, I couldn't even go with the TPG landline + internet bundle as there wasn't TPG landline in my area, so I had to suscribe to Telstra for landline.
It's been 3-4 years, so I assume naked internet bundles are probably more competitive now. But I've been too lazy to bother checking. Good reminder though, I might make use of Good Friday and have a brief look around.
yeh same here no phone=no internet im forced to pay $24 a month for my phone that i never use (since i have skype + mobile on a plan)
Like most of the others, can't get internet without a landline. It irks me terribly. The only thing I use the landline for is calling the mobile to find it - couple of rings only, and they still have the hide to charge for an unanswered call.
You are never charged for an unanswered call in Australia. If you get through to an answering service or voice mail or a queue, then that is considered to be an answered call and charging commences.
lol "still have the hide"
SOZ,It's an unanswered call, no answer, no switching to messagebank - yes, they have a hide!
And ozzie freddo, although they're not supposed to charge for an unanswered call , they do, have been doing so for years, and every time I complain it's a different excuse.
Nah bro, I think you're either mistaken or you are 0.00001% of the population that is being scammed somehow. We don't believe you but if that really is happening, that sucks.
Oh, ok, given that I don't have messagebank on my mobile, would you like to hazard a guess then, as to the reason that I am regularly billed for 2 second calls to my mobile?
@Geewhizz: Are you hitting the answer button on your mobile when you find it? Either by accident or to stop the ringing…?
Seriously…they don't charge if there isn't an answer, so if this is an issue and you are 100% sure you haven't been answering by accident then call and query it and save yourself a little money :)
No, definitely not.
@YTW:
Nope, not hitting the answer button, not even touching the phone before ending the call.
The first time I contacted them about this, I was told to make a log of every call I made so that I had proof of when I was being charged for unanswered calls …. yeah, that's going to happen, but miraculously the unanswered calls stopped appearing on my bill for a few months.
A few years ago, unbeknown to me, my daughter's mobile was sent away for repairs for around 3 months, so I was calling her on it, and obviously she didn't answer. She didn't have messagebank nor any diversions, and obviously the phone was turned off. I was billed for those calls.
I've contacted them about it a few times. Ombudsman may be the solution.
@Geewhizz: there are several conditions for diversion…no answer, busy, unreachable (out of range/switched off/away for repair). Some of these are active by default and under normal conditions would never be invoked and you would not be aware that they are active. Some of the destinations of these diversions do provide an "answer" and this ripples back to represent a "completed" call and thus a charge for you the caller.
I have been a user of Voice over IP for a few years. When I had adsl2+ I had to have a Telstra line so I put a phone on it. It was only ever used for inbound calls. I'm now on NBN fibre and I don't need a Telstra line anymore so I only use VoIP now. I have a plan that includes 100 calls per month to landlines in Australia and 30 international destinations for five dollars. The calls are timed to a maximum of 2 hours each. The catch is that if any of the NBN, your ISP, or your VSP are down then you have no landline type phone.
I took the phone bundle just to get the bigger internet allowance and a cheaper overall price. Over the recent years, the only use the local phone was getting was a dedicated line for telemarketers to call us on, so we just don't even bother plugging a phone in.
On Feb 20th this year I ordered a TPG ADSL2+ connection…tomorrow is April 1st and I still have no physical internet connection at my house. I ended up getting a prepaid Optus 500MB-a-day for $2 sim and have been living off that for 3 weeks. I ordered a Telstra cable connection last Friday out of frustration and they are connecting it on Easter Monday for me <5 business days after ordering it. I got the phone as part of the package and they said it would be installed yesterday…not fussed about that. But managed to get it on a casual plan with all the installation fees waived, so pretty happy with that.
Now if anyone has any advice for telling TPG to go away and tear up my contract…
Got rid of that years ago. I can tell you through it was quite a battle. My mum, a baby boomer, was fiercely resistant to the idea. I think she looked at Telstra like the kind gentle big brother you can always rely on, instead of how I view it, the flashy big brother that looks successful and promises a lot, but is actually very stingy and always wants to borrow money but never pays it back.
in the same boat as most here, just have it "just in case" and for internet… cant wait for fiber so i can get rid of it !
Telstra cable worked out cheaper with landline. Have never plugged it in though. Seems like a waste of resources :/
Same here. Although I've ended up using the PSTN line for my monitored home security.
Good idea!
Have a naked connection and use a free IP phone provider for international calls (www.sipgate.de, its in German, but cheap international rates and no monthly fees).
As I understand it doesn't matter which type of plan you chose you'll always end up paying the Telstra tax. With Naked plans the charge is hidden and so it appears that you've dodged the phone rental fee. Unfortunately you haven't which is why you never see Naked plans with the same download quota within the same provider. As for the phone don't plug it in if you don't want it to ring. I keep an old phone in the garage just in case I need to use the landline if all else fails Redundancy works for me.
On Homeline Budget, 22.95. Don't even plug in the phone! I see it as insurance if something goes wrong with the phone line Telstra will come and fix it, which has been the case twice in the last 12 months due to water ingress in the pit.
yes I do!
I plugged it in day one (almost two years ago) I then received an unsolicited call within 15 minutes.
I unplugged the home phone and have not used it since then!
Only have it as part of the bundle.
All mobile calls and hardly any unsolicited calls on the mobile.
I was however charged for one phone call to a telstra 101 or something number a few months back, when I do not even have a telephone plugged in….go figure!
We're on Telstra's Homeline Budget.
The price for internet + home phone is about the same as Naked ADSL2+, in our case it's actually cheaper!
With that said, the primary phone is the landline, and we have a few VoIP lines.
Not sure if this is still the case but in the early days Naked ADSL had a few major problems.
First problem was with no dial tone on your copper, a technician may assume your line is free and pinch it for another customer on the street resulting in loss of internet for up to several weeks.
The other major problem is that regular PSTN lines have voltage applied to them to power the regular old analog dumb phones (think of the beige old Telstra jobby that didn't require any power to run). With Naked lines, most providers do not apply this voltage which is very effective at preventing corrosion on the copper. So eventually your line would corrode and your sync would drop, especially in wet and humid areas until it got to the point that your internet became unusable.
Also if you did the maths on the costs between a regular ADSL plan with a traditional phone line compared to Naked, you usually found little to no cost savings, or that Naked wasn't worth the hassle with the problems mentioned above.
I am on a Telstra bundle.
Unfortunately it was cheaper than naked adsl, so the lan line is never used.
I use landline for international calls. Actually have a $59 a month plan with Southern Phone Company coz they have good rates for where I need to ring.
Telstra budget line + old $39/m ADSL2+ Amnet plan with a fairly huge quota. Combined costs $52/m. Naked prices for the quota don't compare, especially as we don't use the landline for calls so VOIP doesn't really matter. Only time we've plugged a phone in to this house is when we were testing the line.
Naked DSL apparently suffers from line degradation over time due to the lack of whetting current.
Exetel came out a few years ago and said that Naked is just not worth it and stopped offering it and tried to get as many people off it as they could.
They had many good reasons to do this, even if there is no handset plugged in it is better to have one. The reasons are:
Naked Cable, VDSL2 or Fibre on the other hand.. go for it
Well said… The third point in particular has been helpful over the years when my ADSL suddenly starts dropping out, then I pick up the phone and hear static or no dial tone. I can then call Telstra and lodge a fault on the landline and it gets sorted quicker than if I had to call my ISP and have them investigate the issue
Got it, had it ever since I moved out of home and have never made a call on it. Purely for my ADSL connection
As with a few others here, Telstra cable was not offered without a phone bundle. I use VOIP and have never plugged in a landline. Initially, I seethed at having to pay for something I knew I would never use…but at the same time I wanted the fastest internet available. Now, I don't care…since I'm still paying the same price as when I first signed up a few years ago, which is considerably cheaper than any equivalent new connection today.
Yeah own a landline purely for internet for about 7 years now. I don't even have a phone plug in to it.
I recently just switched to unlimited ADSL2+ and home phone bundle with TPG for $60 a month. Had the landline with Telstra for the past 5 years and never had a phone plugged in. When I looked into naked ADSL it was not cheap enough to justify getting rid of the landline. I haven't found a naked plan cheaper than the TPG bundle I'm on now either - with an enough data allowance to compare to
Have Telstra line w/ net. Only got it for the cable internet that no other ISP offers around here. Don't have a phone or anything connected so half in your boat.
We've got an Exetel line that's part of the $50pm internet package (500GB, no sign up fee). We don't even have a phone for it! We call family members using FaceTime audio and other people on android mostly on VoIP etc.
Before we got that, we were on MNF's naked DSL package also $50pm (with slightly less data). However, we couldn't really find any better deals (price vs data) with naked DSL. Eventually we found Exetel's deal and switched.
By sign up fee, do you mean the $59 connection fee? If so, are you able to share how you got out of having to pay it? :)
there was a promo last year, expired now
It was a promo during christmas (2013), they waived the connection fee.
I never use home phone to call (except my mobile). The reasons to keep it: 1. Back to base alarm. 2. Call 1800 135 102 to retrieve message.
Naked DSL not available in my area so I got a home phone I use maybe four times in a month :(
Had one for years that I never used - switched over to IINet naked now.
Had one for years and years that I've never used, purely needed for DSL… Which stopped last week when I got (fiber) nbn installed! :)
Got Telstra budget line for $23 plus unlimited TPG ADSL 2+ for $30 from the past. Last time I checked it wasn't worth switching.
Yup, that is still the biggest wrought Telstra gets away with. We don't need a land line here either, but must have one because internet is vital to our businesses that we must pay $30 per month for. Throw away money.
Another reason I hate Telstra.
It might be outdated now and in desperate need of replacement, but still you must marvel at the amount of engineering that went into wroughting copper and wroughting other metals into forming a complete telecommunications network that connected a country. So many twisted pairs. Telstra and their predecessors got away with making it happen, the phone lines they wrought from copper is the foundation of many businesses across the nation. I take my hat off to them.
Wait you hate them for it?
That's a very skewed view of what I said.
They charge $30 per month for something I don't use. I do not make telephone calls. I do not receive telephone calls. But for the last 21 years I've been faithfully charged $30-$40 per month for the line.
$7560 or more.
I'm not a big fan of what the NBN has become either but at least I won't have to pay a dead $30 per month any more.
I'm the same as most other people here. It was $93pm with the phone or $110 without. No brainer really.
There was some trouble with our connection on sign up and we were without internet for a week (they of course tried to charge us for the week it wasn't connected). When I queried the bill they informed me that 50% of the bill is the 'phone service' (which I dont use) and my credit would only be $12.6 for the week of no service.
Fun times.
I have one, but only to check the phone number on it.
I do not have naked adsl because I have TPG Unlimited ADSL2+ Paying $60 a month. Cheaper than any naked plans ever.
I have a line with Exetel as part of a bundle, paying $44.50/mo for phone and ADSL. 75 peak, 150 offpeak.
Never use the landline but it was cheaper than any other plan, naked or not for my usage.
I go over occasionally but they seem to not bother capping me?
It's now only $39.99! I wonder if this offer is here to say tho…
That's for 100gb untimed
I've not had a 'Telstra' phone for years now. Originally got the phone connected but had an Internode ADSL/phone bundle and was paying around $79/month (included the $19 landline fee). After about 6 months cut over to their Easy Naked plan with the Nodephone and the price dropped to $59/month both at around the 70GB/month.
Have recently changed to the Easy 150 special plan which meant I 'lost' the Nodephone in that package but pick it up again separately for $5/month. So now paying $64.95 for 150GB and 'includes' the same $10 VOIP calls. Only ever exceeded the $10 amount about 3 times in 8 years, so seems to be fine and never really felt the need for a fixed Telstra line since. Also never get any marketing calls because the VOIP number was never listed. By default Internode flag them as a silent number which rolled over from when we had the original bundle.
Haven't really had any issues apart from during/after heavy rain and this comes good again fairly quickly after things dry up.
I do like it when marketers come to my door telling me they can offer a better deal. I let them tell me how good their offer is and then come back with "That's interesting, so can you better my current deal then?". They just shake their head and leave, don't even try to counter it.
yes, would most definitely dump the home phone if I could. Unfortunately Telstra is the only provider of something approaching broadband at my exchange, and the phone service is part of the bundle.
Telstra forces me to have it even though I'm on cable, so their telemarketing companies that they sold my new number to can call me even though I opted out.
Yep. Connected to ADSL1 Rim so no option to get naked. Used to have the phone connected, but to many random false Microsoft calls which disconnected my internet due to poor line quality. $24pm to Telstra for 1km of copper (Amnet for ADSL). It's almost criminal.
Edit: Should note that I've never made a phone call. Always use mobile.
Have to if I want home internet connection. It's either that or mobile or sataelle. I'm paying $170 /month for a 500GB (now) adsl2 connection and it's "required" landline and my mobile phone plan.
I never use my landline unless it's to check the line is still "live" (connection issues) or if I need to call someone. heck I still have one of those telstra touchfone 400 phones that still works.
I use to pay for the budget Telstra line just so that I could run TPG adsl2+ off it. My household use to make a few calls here and there and it'd end up being approx. $35/month (phone) + $60/month (internet) = $100/month total approx. I ended up switching completely over to TPG $60 + PAYG voice calls. At the cheaper rates I've had to barely top up $20 two or 3 times over the span of a year. Let's say $60 (TPG) vs $420 (Telstra). No regrets.
I'm in the same boat
Worked out cheaper for me to add a phone line with TPG ($10) and get unlimited ADSL for $60 a month
Didnt even bother to plug in a landline (not that a had one)
Maybe a Poll at the start?
Naked ADSL isn't available in country areas where Telstra has a virtual monopoly. Yeah, there are other very minor providers, however, they are piggyback on Telstra.
You pay more for everything when you're in the country, except rent.
I'm on an old Telstra plan, $80 for ADSL2 with home line rental and 500GB download, I don't use the phone but don't think I'll be able to get cheaper just for naked DSL
I got a telstra cable bundle. Called Telstra recently to disconnect the landline and the best they could do was charge me more for the privilege of disconnecting my phone. Discovered my bundle includes message bank. My home phone is now permanently diverted to message bank. No more sales people, charities or Microsoft "tech support" scammers bothering us any more. If you call my home you get a message telling you to call my mobile (if you have it). $90 for 500gb telstra cable at 115mb is a pretty good deal.
I've got the cable bundle too (same speed also), was on 200gb and now 500gb, I'm paying $78 per month.
My landline is no longer plugged in. I got sick of either wrong numbers or telemarketers calling it. Never use it, but it's attached to the deal, which can't be beat.
Wow BigPond Ultimate Liberty for $78. Thats awesome.
I'm not complaining :D
It was the $88 plan with a $10 off per month plan discount, here's the flyer from Feb 2012!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aiuwf1e3vjokehi/TelstraCableDealFe…
i am also paying for a phone line I don't use
the only reason I chose Telstra over TPG or Dodo is because I wanted good speeds. I should have trialed the smaller guys before committing to 24 months
Considering I'm paying more for an ADSL connection than most pay for Cable, Telstra can shove their double data up their a**
We've kept ours due to:
Young kids - Far easier for them to use one of the cordless phones around the house in the event of an emergency to dial 000. Once their older & can use a mobile, no need for the landline.
House alarm that rings my mobile if it goes off. I haven't found a suitable solution/alternative if we ditched the phone line.
Done this for the last 12 years or so. Naked plans/provider options are too limited… and the price-gouging psses me off. $ should be $20-25 cheaper, but they bump naked prices $10-15 higher.
highly advise against getting a naked data plan for a number of reasons. many problems with them. firstly it has no dial tone which means your line may be cut or stolen by a tech and used to connect another house.
We have a phone that barely gets used. Only when someone occasionally rings us, telemarketers and when we can't find our mobile phones we use it to find our mobile phones.
No naked ADSL available in most regional centres. So we are forced to pay for the landline + Internet.
Hopefully NBN soon so that it can be done away with for good. Although I will probably port the number to some cheap service just to hold onto it.