We all love to call our relatives - don't we? Whether it's a call to Uncle Roy to ask about his new greenhouse or to wish Grandma a happy birthday, a home phone is important to family life.

We don't just call family in the UK, if you have family abroad you want a good home phone package to get in touch with them without having to re-mortgage your house to pay for it.

One of the most popular and well known home phone packages for families is the Friends & Family service from BT. BT's Friends & Family home phone packages come with international discounts and enable you to make longer calls to your loved ones for less money.

As families tend to be the heaviest users of home phone services, we are first going to look at the BT Anytime call plan.

The BT Anytime call plan for includes:

* Unlimited calls to UK landlines at any time

* Inclusive calls to 0845 and 0870 numbers at any time

* BT Answer 1571

* BT 1471

* BT Text - send 200 text messages a month from your home phone

Then you can add on Family and Friends to save on international calls for only £1 a month extra.
This includes discounted calls to landlines and mobiles in 234 international destinations. Prices start from 2.5p a minute with a 9.05p call set up fee.

If you are calling several international numbers on your home phone you could upgrade to the BT International Freedom service. This costs £4.89 a month and includes landline calls to BT's most popular 36 destinations for free up to an hour. If you hang up and redial before the 1 hour limit, you can avoid the extra charges.

Calls to mobiles using the BT International Freedom service will cost 26.4p a minute. If UK mobile calls are very important to you, then the BT Friends and Family mobile add on will cost £1.50 a month. This add on for the BT Anytime home phone call plan lets you make longer calls to UK mobiles all day every day for 7p a minute.

A few more examples of home phone deals are:

TalkTalk UK Anytime includes

TalkTalk has a UK Anytime home phone service that would be great for families and calling relatives abroad. TalkTalk Anytime costs £4.49 a month plus £11.25 line rental. The TalkTalk Anytime home phone package offers unlimited anytime calls to local and national landline numbers. You will not have to pay your current home phone provider line rental as it will be paid directly to TalkTalk. The contract length is 12 months and the minimum one off call charge for non-inclusive calls is 9.05p.

Some of the main features in this home phone package include

* Inclusive anytime calls to 0870/0845 numbers

* Unlimited calls to TalkTalk customers around the UK

* Free TalkTalk voicemail

* Unlimited calls to 36 international landline destinations

The TalkTalk Anytime home phone package has another bonus feature that would be an excellent tool for families who make heavy use of their home phone line. The TalkTalk Calling Circle allows you to choose 16 peoples numbers, including international and mobile numbers, and gives you discount every time you call them. TalkTalk will give you further discount if you allocate one of your chosen 16 numbers as a 'Prime Number'.

Virgin Media Phone Size: XL for £7.95 per month (plus line rental) includes

*Unlimited calls to UK landlines anytime of the day, 7 days a week

Virgin Media's Phone Size XL plan is great if you call a lot of people in the UK on their landlines but isn't ideal if you need to call loads of people on their mobile phones or anyone overseas as these numbers aren't included in the monthly cost.

Despite Virgin Media operating on its own cabled network you will most likely be able to keep your phone number when you switch over to them.

Another benefit that comes with the Virgin Media XL home phone package is that you get free Virgin Media Size: M TV.

Size: M TV comes with around 45 channels including Sky Sports News, Film 4 and Dave.