I thank everyone for the responses and I will now deal with each point in the order they were made. But first I will explain that we have landline telephone and internet services in three different countries including the UK. In the UK the deal is as I described it in the OP. In one of the other countries we have "unlimited" internet and free calls to "geographic" type landline numbers in the country for around £8 a month but we can suspend part of the service for up to 4 months per year. Both the UK and other are over copper lines.
In the third country we have "unlimited" landline internet and telephone service with free calls to landline and mobile numbers in over 40 different countries worldwide, only premium numbers are excluded. The service is over optical fibre right into the property (no copper anywhere), the router and Phone plug directly into the fibre terminal. This service can be suspended in its entirety at will at any time and the bill then falls to zero. The monthly cost is around £38 per month of use but in our case when spread over the year it works out at less than £13 per month - through the generous call package we of course get a lot of use out of it when we use it.
In the third example above it is possible to have internet only and I know of other countries where the same applies, but that is not the case in the UK. Where you take internet only you pay for the internet as an item over and above the line charge - you can then add a telephone service if you desire. In the UK we are currently on a no free calls at all and pay for each one by type and duration (however, see below) so we are on the lowest routine cost arrangement offered by the provider but it is a telephone and internet package - we can at least receive calls without any concerns about cost. We are unlikely to bother changing unless savings of several pounds per month are in prospect.
When on Skype one does not have a telephone number as such so cannot be called unless the caller is also on Skype and one is by the computer when the call arrives. We do not use mobile phones, which in themselves mostly cost quite a lot of money to run which must be factored into the accounting - Skype can be completely free but the mobiles certainly are not. Add to that that since quite recently Skype is now only accessible via 64bit technology and some of us need to upgrade the equipment to make use of Skype.
When trying to have a look at the
https://www.broadband-finder.co.uk site I got a Firefox message telling me that it refused to connect because the site is improperly configured and that my connection would be insecure. I will see what I can get out of this in a later re-attempt.
It has been my understanding that all telephone exchanges in the UK have been computerised and remotely controllable via the software for quite some time. Thus the notion that someone has plug in and unplug things for individual customers/consumers seems distinctly out of place. Indeed, our current UK provider sometimes does an electronic check and adjustment to our service if/when we detect any anomaly, there has never been any suggestion. However, I am aware that under some circumstances quite a bit of fuss is made of how "complicated" things are when BT get involved.
We are with TalkTalk and the "package" is called something like "Basic", "Standard" or some such thing. We have no calls for free except that if we call another TalkTalk (and/or subsidiaries/associated providers) customer the call is free. We have caller's number display included for free. I am aware that others are very set against TalkTalk and we have not been without incident but I have to say that overall we would not be any better off with anyone else. We were with BT for the longest while and, based on the experience at the end, would not go back unless they paid us for using their service. To be continued....