I'm officially puzzled now. My phone is plugged into that phone socket alongside the ethernet port in the modem thingy. We are fibre only, no copper wire at all. So, surely this business of going VOIP whether I like it or not, won't actually affect anything? I'm game for new DECT-ish phones anyway, sometime in the next couple of years, I'm fed up with my shitty Panasonics.
Idiot question 2. OK, so maybe I have a power cut, so my router dies. The modem box has battery backup (2018 install) so if I plugged my PC ethernet cable directly into the modem and ignored the dead router, would this work? I've never been sure what a router does, but if it just spreads the electronovoles around, then surely I can have one connection? As the mobile signal is shite here, some form of connection to the outside world would be important.
I eventually found the access to the AA cells in the battery backup box, took some doing...