Should I risk switching to TalkTalk Business?

I'm coming to the end of my contract with Zen and am looking around at potential alternatives to migrate to a faster service on FTTP. TalkTalk Business is looking attractive with great prices and they seem able to supply to residential customers.

I've researched quite a bit and reviews seem a little bit mixed however. Most on Trustpilot are positive but the majority on other sites like broadband.co.uk say to stay away, of course I realise that it's often more likely that people will post about bad experiences than good.

The TalkTalk forum here seems to be generally positive although I didn't find many posts specifically about the business service. I know many ISPs use TTB for backhaul and by all accounts that is usually excellent so I'm hoping their own end-user service would be too.

Apologies for the slightly wordy post but with a 24 month contract I don't want to get locked into something that I could rapidly regret while now permanently working from home.

Any experiences either way/advice to run for the hills etc. from the knowledgeable folk here would be gratefully received!

I am currently on a lease line via another ISP that uses TT, and we have had a fair few outages over the last three years, but, it's cheap(er)!

Well I’m running a TTB based FTTP service and the connection itself hasn’t missed a beat. There were some more frequent PPPoE reconnects in summer last year (about three over 2 months as I recall) when we kicked of with them, but since then solid like a rock, not a single PPPoE reconnect in six months.

Previously the same FTTP connection was Cerberus for a few years. No complaints either and their SLA with Openreach as great as I got to test that out in anger. Throughput wise TTB is great. Latency wise from Woodbridge/Suffolk it’s about 1 ms slower than the BT Wholesale backhauled connection with Cerb. to any of the London based datacentres.

My main grip with TTB - some ridiculous bug in their billing which kept charging for months on end for a paper billing fee. Eventually resolved with several “interventions”.

Otherwise nothing broke, nothing to moan about.

Anything else you want to know fire away.

Thanks @Pheasant, I had a feeling it was you I'd seen mentioning TTB before in other threads but wasn't entirely sure.

I do have a couple of questions which I've sent in to TTB but keep missing them when they call me (or I just get hold music then the line drops) so any that you could help with would be very useful.

1) Do they support custom reverse DNS records when using a static IP?

2) Is there a way of telling if you'd be on their next generation network to be able to have 4 static IPs instead of just one?

3) Are you able to use your own router or are you bound to use the one they supply?

Wanting 4 static IPs might sound a bit greedy but I do have some work-related equipment at home and it would make network config a bit easier if I could assign it a dedicated IP.

Thanks in advance.

You can definitely use your own router. I only have a single static IP with them on this connection, however they'll sell you 4 additional static IPs for £5 a month (think they call it 'Static IP Boost')

But I believe still no IPv6?

Hi there - really happy to discuss TalkTalk services with you - and also the Static IPs (which we can do as a group of 4 for you) - if you contact the fibre team on 08001313000 more than happy to discuss this in more detail and see if we can assist - Sarah

Not as far as I'm aware.

In reply to a post by Sarah6075:

Hi there - really happy to discuss TalkTalk services with you - and also the Static IPs (which we can do as a group of 4 for you) - if you contact the fibre team on 08001313000 more than happy to discuss this in more detail and see if we can assist - Sarah

Hi Sarah - you may want to confirm that you're an ISP rep with the admin team here. Speak to [email protected]

Seems to be the phone number of Utility Warehouse rather than TT - not very good to not identify yourself if posting for people to phone...

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Hi Sarah - you may want to confirm that you're an ISP rep with the admin team here. Speak to [email protected]

and clarify which ISP as its not 100% clear

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Hi Sarah - you may want to confirm that you're an ISP rep with the admin team here. Speak to [email protected]

Seconded; if an ISP rep, please set up a suitable signature block, perhaps an ISP branded email, and get the (isp) tag from the owners.

Look up FTTP via UnchainedISP they are great support (they provided both TalkTalk Business and BTW Wholesale backhaul carrier) as all service are 12 months contract with free static ip address and you get great support at all times via ticket as Keith will reply instant time (mostly even late at night and weekend)

Edited by deleted (Thu 16-Jun-22 13:22:22)

I think only BTW and TTB backhaul carriers they are pretty good network with minor issues not a major one. TTR are the worse one.

UnchainedISP have good reviews: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/isp/unchained-isp...

Edited by adslmax (Thu 16-Jun-22 14:31:56)

We believe Sarah is likely to be a genuine TalkTalk Business staff although we can't verify that phone number.

Googling for the phone number it seems to be Utility Warehouse.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Googling for the phone number it seems to be Utility Warehouse.

Odd.. I did google it.. but that is a bit worrying..

In reply to a post by ian72:

Googling for the phone number it seems to be Utility Warehouse.

+1

OK, looks like the results that came up on Google may be wrong as actually dialling the number the IVR does state it is talktalk business.

In reply to a post by Buggs8:

I agree Keith was good when I had his bonded service for 6 months. Not advertised but I think it was about £112 a month for 2 lines and a backup. He used to reply to me late evenings and even spent a whole Sunday into Monday with me on E-mail talking me through stuff

Worth the mention they also do 1 month options

I am going to have to talk with our TTB person on this. Unchained don't have their own network they directly resell TTB, TTB don't sell bonded services they only have active-standby.

There's a fair amount of potential here if TTB do actually offer bonded services so I'll definitely query it with the salesbot.

We, aa.net.uk, can bond TTB tails. Either multiple TTB or a mix of TTB and BTW. You'd need a special router if you want to bond the uplink, but we can sell/rent a FireBrick router, or there are other ways.

In reply to a post by andrewhearn:

We, aa.net.uk, can bond TTB tails. Either multiple TTB or a mix of TTB and BTW. You'd need a special router if you want to bond the uplink, but we can sell/rent a FireBrick router, or there are other ways.

Yes indeed, however TTB aren't involved in the bonding they just send you PPP sessions. Unchained don't have their own LNS or indeed IP space as you good folks do so I'm intrigued as to how they're managing to provide a bonded service.

Quite surprising if they've the ability to do this they aren't advertising it. It's not exactly a common ability or something you'd build for almost no customers as you aren't advertising it.

They don't actually appear to even sell an active-passive solution according to their website.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

I am going to have to talk with our TTB person on this. Unchained don't have their own network they directly resell TTB, TTB don't sell bonded services they only have active-standby.

There's a fair amount of potential here if TTB do actually offer bonded services so I'll definitely query it with the salesbot.

That's nonsense. UnchainedISP is run by TTB network as I have them for 1 year as the static ip address shown as belong to TalkTalk Business.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

I am going to have to talk with our TTB person on this. Unchained don't have their own network they directly resell TTB, TTB don't sell bonded services they only have active-standby.

That's nonsense. UnchainedISP is run by TTB network as I have them for 1 year as the static ip address shown as belong to TalkTalk Business.

That's what I said?

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Fri 17-Jun-22 09:29:59)

Unchained do have a bonded service. It runs over the top to what seem to be leased datacentre resources, likely to require 12 month contract as SoGEA. Unchained do not have their own IP space so have to use third party hosting.

It's mentioned here: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/reviews/7466/ - this ISP is the latest 2 reviews on the site at this time so appear on the front page so trivial to find.

TTB definitely do not offer this service, Unchained charge a premium for it for obvious reasons.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Fri 17-Jun-22 15:26:06)

I moved from being with BT for 2 years with 330MBit g.fast to I've been using TTB in December. Seamless signup experience during one of their fairly regular promo periods (look out for these, worth waiting a few months!) at just £34 a month for 330MBit. Static IP assigned no problem the day the service was activated.

Similar pings to BT, solid 310-320MBit in speed tests any time of the day or evening. PPPoE connection has dropped twice in the last month overnight for 5 - 10mins - not sure if this was TTB or Openreach issue but didn't notice it at the time, only in the logs thereafter. Openreach are feverishly racing to roll out FTTP here so maybe that's been the cause of some of those brief dropouts.

Last year when we had FTTP in our village I tried to order from TTB but they found there system would not let them order it for me, (long story) they found they had no 'Cable Links' in the headend exchange

I am with Trunk Networks now, no problems at all with the service.

https://www.trunknetworks.com/business-broadband

I see you decided to step back from your original post, was disappointed to see that

UW use TT.

Exercises in futility are overrated. Anyone so inclined can speak with Keith at Unchained ISP if they're curious. They're actually just down the road in the grand scheme from me and I owe those guys a beverage so might catch up with them at some point.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Fri 17-Jun-22 14:27:25)

In reply to a post by Buggs8:

I agree Keith was good when I had his bonded service for 6 months. Not advertised but I think it was about £112 a month for 2 lines and a backup. He used to reply to me late evenings and even spent a whole Sunday into Monday with me on E-mail talking me through stuff

Worth the mention they also do 1 month options

Any setup charge on this? Presume it's the same as the standard business products and free?

Did they provide any equipment or bring your own as with the normal stuff?

Asking for a customer.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Fri 17-Jun-22 15:26:53)

I wasn't talking about Keith I was referring to your original accurate comments about Buggs8 that you later edited.

Edited by deleted (Fri 17-Jun-22 15:49:21)

In reply to a post by dect:

I wasn't talking about Keith I was referring to your original accurate comments about Buggs8 that you later edited.

I committed to reducing my drama count last month. The comments would likely result in denial, indignation or a brief period of silence followed by a new user account. Nothing good.

Up to the staff to moderate the forum.

Sorry, you make very valid points.