Switching to TalkTalks network

I have a few questions about TalkTalk that I would like to know the answers to before looking further into switching to TalkTalk, so any answers/insights would be heavily appreciated.

I am currently on BTs 80/20mb FTTC service and thinking about switching to TalkTalks 80/20mb FTTC, and then onto TalkTalks FTTP 1000mb FTTP later on.

At a preliminary look, the TalkTalk 80/20mb FTTC looks great for cost savings and the TalkTalk 1000mb FTTP looks great in terms of speed, however, I know other things affect the connection, with things like congestion, poor transit and peering agreements, poor latency and high packet loss, etc playing a part.


Basically, does anyone know if TalkTalk has any drastically/material differences in their network topology/the calibre of their network, that could be considered a downgrade in comparison to BTs network?

I'm wondering about things like, if I can expect the same effective grade/standard/calibre/quality as BTs network, so better if not the same, performance of things like peering, transit and backhaul arrangements, packet loss and latency, actual throughput to the internet, and any throttling or capacity/congestion issues.

From what I can see, the main difference in terms of internet access is the lack of IPv6, but I was hoping to find some people to share their insights/experiences.


I would appreciate any help.

Are you in an area where TalkTalk have their own FTTP network then ?

Yes, they are currently building it near me in York

They're calling it "UFO" for "Ultra Fibre Optic" if I recall correctly

Be interesting to see what the 1000 package is a month.

OK, just checking, as they don�t currently offer anything over Openreach provided FTTP.

Have you found the TalkTalk specific part of the forum ? You might get informed opinion from users of their current offerings there.

There's not a huge dfference between BT Wholesale (whom BT Retail use) and TalkTalk networks. Both will provide similar speeds and latency assuming there's no congestion anywhere.

If TalkTalk will bring FTTP to you within the next 12 months, then it it might be better to wait until its ready and move directly to that instead of moving to TalkTalk FTTC first - their FTTC services run on 18 month min terms.

Their 1 Gig down/up service is £25 pm, around the same price as their 80/20 FTTC service:

https://www.talktalk.co.uk/shop/ufo/broadband

£25 for 900Mb....oh my!
I am spending £107.21 for 60mb down for 2 services combined!

Something not right with this country at all.

In reply to a post by derekdel:

£25 for 900Mb....oh my!
I am spending £107.21 for 60mb down for 2 services combined!

Something not right with this country at all.

Its because TalkTalk have cut out the 'middle-man' (Openreach) for their York FTTP rollout hence they can sell it at a very competitive price. Some might say £25 pm for 1 Gig symmetrical is way too cheap but I'm sure TalkTalk's bean counters have done their sums. Likewise B4RN sell the same speeds on their FTTP network for £30 pm, again bypassing Openreach.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

There's not a huge dfference between BT Wholesale (whom BT Retail use) and TalkTalk networks. Both will provide similar speeds and latency assuming there's no congestion anywhere.

If TalkTalk will bring FTTP to you within the next 12 months, then it it might be better to wait until its ready and move directly to that instead of moving to TalkTalk FTTC first - their FTTC services run on 18 month min terms.

Their 1 Gig down/up service is £25 pm, around the same price as their 80/20 FTTC service:

https://www.talktalk.co.uk/shop/ufo/broadband

WOW That's an amazing deal at £25 per month.

Edited by busterboy (Sun 07-Apr-19 09:43:57)

But haven�t previous providers shown that the �pile it high, and sell it cheap� model doesn�t equate to good product .......

I wonder how much bandwidth is being allocated for the backhaul ?

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

There's not a huge dfference between BT Wholesale (whom BT Retail use) and TalkTalk networks. Both will provide similar speeds and latency assuming there's no congestion anywhere.

If TalkTalk will bring FTTP to you within the next 12 months, then it it might be better to wait until its ready and move directly to that instead of moving to TalkTalk FTTC first - their FTTC services run on 18 month min terms.

Their 1 Gig down/up service is £25 pm, around the same price as their 80/20 FTTC service:

https://www.talktalk.co.uk/shop/ufo/broadband

That sounds good

My aim is to hopefully move to TalkTalks FTTC while they finish rolling it out in my area to avoid having to pay BTs out of contract charges or taking out another 18 month contract with BT, and switching via a cashback site for some cashback.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

But haven�t previous providers shown that the �pile it high, and sell it cheap� model doesn�t equate to good product .......

I wonder how much bandwidth is being allocated for the backhaul ?

Thats what I was mainly concerned about, I don't think theres much point having a gigabit connection if it turns out it gets latency of 100ms+ to eu servers and only getting 50mb to servers having a gigabit connection as well

Mainly wanting to find out if TalkTalks FTTC network is of a good quality, as I'm guessing the TalkTalk UFO network is probably run of the same network after the last bit of the connection to the house over ADSL/FTTC/FTTP.

Edited by deleted (Sun 07-Apr-19 14:30:19)

In that case best thing to do would be to keep your current BT FTTC line active and then once TalkTalk FTTP is available, take out their FTTP service on a monthly rolling contract @£33 pm - which is still a great price for a 1 Gig service. Only cancel your FTTC service if you�re happy with TalkTalk FTTP.

I have used TT fibre 80/20 for five years now, the only PL I have had is when my MKIII faceplate socket started to die, no fault of the service.

Latency is great with next to no jitter, synced throughput day and night and I have never seen any congestion as yet.

I have however never used their routers so I can not comment on those.

I have not needed to but I would use their forum for customer service not their phone contact.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In that case best thing to do would be to keep your current BT FTTC line active and then once TalkTalk FTTP is available, take out their FTTP service on a monthly rolling contract @£33 pm - which is still a great price for a 1 Gig service. Only cancel your FTTC service if you�re happy with TalkTalk FTTP.

Thats a good idea, I'll look into doing that if I can't come to a conclusion before I order the service.

In reply to a post by TiMeTraVeLeR:

I have used TT fibre 80/20 for five years now, the only PL I have had is when my MKIII faceplate socket started to die, no fault of the service.

Latency is great with next to no jitter, synced throughput day and night and I have never seen any congestion as yet.

I have however never used their routers so I can not comment on those.

I have not needed to but I would use their forum for customer service not their phone contact.

Brilliant, thanks for your insight

I've just plugged in a random York address (in their FTTP area) on TalkTalk's website and it shows the following:

https://i.postimg.cc/5yPRv6BT/Talk-Talk-FTTP.jpg

As they guarantee a minimum of 450 Mbps, its a bit of a no-brainer going for it. Even 45% of 1 Gig @ £25 pm is a great price and a significant step up on your current 80/20 FTTC.

TBH I don't think any FTTP ISP is going to offer you guaranteed 1 Gig speeds 24/7/365, unless going for a dedicated leased line FTTP service costing £1000s.

They also offer a 'Great Connection Guarantee' so its pretty much a risk free signup:

In reference to www.talktalk.co.uk/shop/ufo/broadband:

Great Connection Guarantee: You can cancel your UFO contract within 30 days of your line being connected provided that you cancel by calling 0800 230 0219. You will be charged for the period prior to your cancellation. This does not affect your cooling off period. Offer does not apply to existing customers.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

I've just plugged in a random York address (in their FTTP area) on TalkTalk's website and it shows the following:

https://i.postimg.cc/5yPRv6BT/Talk-Talk-FTTP.jpg

As they guarantee a minimum of 450 Mbps, its a bit of a no-brainer going for it. Even 45% of 1 Gig @ £25 pm is a great price and a significant step up on your current 80/20 FTTC.

TBH I don't think any FTTP ISP is going to offer you guaranteed 1 Gig speeds 24/7/365, unless going for a dedicated leased line FTTP service costing £1000s.

They also offer a 'Great Connection Guarantee' so its pretty much a risk free signup:

In reference to www.talktalk.co.uk/shop/ufo/broadband:

Great Connection Guarantee: You can cancel your UFO contract within 30 days of your line being connected provided that you cancel by calling 0800 230 0219. You will be charged for the period prior to your cancellation. This does not affect your cooling off period. Offer does not apply to existing customers.

Excellent, I'll order it when it becomes available to order in my area, thanks

I was with TT Fibre for 18 months. Pings were always stable and I always got full line speed, 24/7. Zero downtime during the 18 months.

The ping was about 1ms higher on TT compared to BTw. Jitter always very low.

No IPV6 support at all when I was with TT. Not sure if that has changed now?

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

No IPV6 support at all when I was with TT. Not sure if that has changed now?

No, TalkTalk are the only major ISP not to announce their plans for IPv6.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

No IPV6 support at all when I was with TT. Not sure if that has changed now?

No, TalkTalk are the only major ISP not to announce their plans for IPv6.

Plusnet? Or have they recently moved on?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Plusnet? Or have they recently moved on?

Have Plusnet announced their plan for IPv6? I haven't heard much at all since the trial ended.

Also, I was thinking as "major" in this context as ISPs with 4+ million customers.

Oooo, I think you're being a little restrictive there . Presumably they are well over a million these days.

But - not important. As you say, PN seem to have gone to sleep on the issue. From what I now know about how IPv6 should be implemented their trial, which I was on, was a complete waste of time as they appeared to issue a single static IPv6 address, just emulating mimicking IPv4.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 10-Apr-19 09:49:15)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Oooo, I think you're being a little restrictive there . Presumably they are well over a million these days.

I probably am! Although even at a million they'd be over 3 million short of TalkTalk's tally.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

From what I now know about how IPv6 should be implemented their trial, which I was on, was a complete waste of time as they appeared to issue a single static IPv6 address, just emulating mimicking IPv4.

Yikes, I didn't know that. They should have been dishing out 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses to each customer like the other IPv6 providers do. In fact they probably dish out more, Sky hands out a /56 prefix but "only" has a /64 active on the WAN interface. Possibly for future use.

Plusnet was hardly a trial then, more of an experiment.

What IP addressing do you have on Three? On my Three phone it is IPv4 with carrier grade NAT, which has no possibility for running a server which is accessible remotely.

My phone is probably the same. As a wifi hotspot it hands out (static) 192.168s, and when USB-tethered to my ASUS router that does the same.

I've also now got the Three MiFi Huawei B311 with the unlimited data SIM (100GB + unlimited add-on).

The Huawei B311 sounds interesting, I wonder if it has port forwarding options. Obviously that would only work for incoming connections if you had a WAN IP address without CGNAT, but if Three are serious about people ditching landlines they need to be offering everything people have now on traditional ISPs.

I was looking in its control panel yesterday. Various functions are disabled. I'll have a look later if I remember, things to do right now.

Prompt me if I don't do that by early evening. Tomorrow I won't have time, but after that I'll have plenty.

Edit: And it only has a single ethernet port!

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 10-Apr-19 11:03:58)

Will do, might be interesting to know for other people considering a brave new world of SIM-based home broadband!

Did you find anything out? Port forwarding options and such?

It looks to be there, but the best thing is for me to give you screen shots of the relevant page of the GUI, then with the three or four relevant options opened (one at a time), including opening the built-in help feature for the option. That will take me a while.

The thing is I have never done any port forwarding or anything like that so although it may look fine to me someone who understands the subject may notice something missing. If you see what I mean.

It's likely to be Friday now - I shall have plenty of time then.

There is considerable current discussion about this router and the other one that Three can provide in the mobile broadband forum. The other one isn't available in this deal as far as I know, and looks more like a lightweight. Though I seem to remember someone posting it had something they need that the B311 doesn't. Maybe it is actually better?

You might find that useful. I stopped reading it as it became not relevant to me.

PS: I now have a BQM running. Link in my sig. It's a dynamic address but seems to hold as long as the router is not disconnected. It takes only a couple of minutes for me to update the IP Address if I do turn it off or reboot it any time.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 10-Apr-19 19:49:04)

Thank for that. I found this thread:

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/mobilebroadband/f/...

Apparently with the 3internet APN, there is no CGNAT.

With the three.co.uk APN, there is CGNAT.

That would account for CGNAT on my phone, which uses the three.co.uk APN.

I'm guessing then that you are using the 3internet APN, since you are able to ping it remotely. In which case, assuming the port forwarding stuff in the B311 is functional, it should work fine.

But IPv6 would be nicer.

That was the thread that started all the talk about the Three offerings. Obviously I've read all of that as I made the opening post!

I was more referring to this thread.

I forget where my B322 gets back to, but my phone with the true unlimited SIM uses three.ie.

But we really are hijacking this thread. This is nothing at all to do with the subject, and your suggestion that this conversation might help others doesn't really work. Look at the Subject of this thread .