Talk Talk breakup?

A new report highlights how a £330m revolving credit facility that matures next November, £685m worth of debt maturing in February 2025, higher borrowing costs and last year’s failure to agree a £3bn takeover by Virgin Media (here) has left broadband ISP TalkTalk with few options, and a break-up of the business is now expected.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/07/debt-p...

So what does this mean for the many of smaller altnets that use TTB as their backhaul?

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

A new report highlights how a £330m revolving credit facility that matures next November, £685m worth of debt maturing in February 2025, higher borrowing costs and last year’s failure to agree a £3bn takeover by Virgin Media (here) has left broadband ISP TalkTalk with few options, and a break-up of the business is now expected.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/07/debt-p...

So what does this mean for the many of smaller altnets that use TTB as their backhaul?

I expect they will go with who ever takes over the Talk Talk backhaul if it happens

I thought Talk Talk was doing well, but i suppose with so much choice now, they are finding it hard. Just a shame that BT don't break up,

If they go under those and cant sell it will there by a TT backhaul?

I'm glad TalkTalk bought Virtual1 and had time to turn it into just another channel provider that nickel and dime for everything right before realising they can't afford all these things, thanks guys.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

If they go under those and cant sell it will there by a TT backhaul?

If they go under, no. They'll stop trading.

They aren't going to go under. They'll probably be acquired by Daisy and go the way that other Daisy acquisitions have. VMO2/Liberty Global will be interested in the residential customer base.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

If they go under those and cant sell it will there by a TT backhaul?

I doubt Talk Talk will go under and as been said the back haul will be sold. But it is strange how things go, in the ADSL days they were useless and yet carried on going, now in the FTTC/FTTP days when they are a little better they are losing money. I suppose they can't compete, Talk Talk used to be a budget provider, but they are not so budget these days.
I said I would never go to Talk Talk and I never have, seen how they treat their customers and what their customer service is like

Are TT really that bad?

Over the years I have found there is nothing very different about any of the ISPs with maybe the exception of Plusnet.

I've had bad experiences from Vodafone, EE and Shell, to mention just a few. Their ADR representatives are just as bad.

Talk Talk really is Jekyll and Hyde

Their retail department from all accounts is poor. But TTB as a reseller is excellent.

In reply to a post by hk11:

I have found there is nothing very different about any of the ISPs with maybe the exception of Plusnet

Are you saying that (the part in bold) because you have just signed up with Plusnet?

No.

Plusnet is one if the few ISPs I have gone back to several times. I wouldn't say they are great, but their employees usually do *try* and help. Their webservers are useless, which is surprising given the business they are in, but like I say most ISPs seem to be the same.

I would have included Sky/Now TV in with Plusnet had it not been for my recent experience with them. I think I was on my third contract with them, only for them to lie to me by telling me my credit card company had contacted them and told them to remove my details from their servers!

In reply to a post by hk11:

Are TT really that bad?

Over the years I have found there is nothing very different about any of the ISPs with maybe the exception of Plusnet.

I've had bad experiences from Vodafone, EE and Shell, to mention just a few. Their ADR representatives are just as bad.

Pay peanuts...

I understood TT was no longer in this category?

In reply to a post by hk11:

Are TT really that bad?

Over the years I have found there is nothing very different about any of the ISPs with maybe the exception of Plusnet.

I've had bad experiences from Vodafone, EE and Shell, to mention just a few. Their ADR representatives are just as bad.

I have never used TT myself, but I know plenty of people who have and I have had to phone TT a number of times on behalf of people and their customer service makes you want to pull your teeth out. I thought BT was bad, but TT is worse. That was mainly back in the ADSL days, where a person that lived next to the exchange had problems getting a speed higher than 1Mb/s.

As FTTC came, I had less reason to phone them for people, and they are a lot better at being reliable, but customer service still stinks. The one reason why I don't phone them so much is that the majority of people I know that used TT have moved to another provider.

I am dreading contacting zzoomm if I have a problem, I have heard their customer service can be hit-and-miss, but so far, so good.

In reply to a post by hk11:

No.

Plusnet is one if the few ISPs I have gone back to several times. I wouldn't say they are great, but their employees usually do *try* and help. Their webservers are useless, which is surprising given the business they are in, but like I say most ISPs seem to be the same.

I have never gone back to Plusnet as I never left them until now, but yeah considering that Plusnet belongs to BT, I was pretty happy with them, Customer service was ok and the problem I did have a few years ago was not their fault, but Openreach and to be fair to Openreach, well the people that came out they did try hard to sort out the problem, but it comes to something that they had no idea what the problem was. Thankfully, all I had to do was keep the Huawei modem in place and it worked fine.

If for some reason I had to leave zzoomm, I would certainly look at Plusnet again.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Pay peanuts...

Not these days, they are in the same price range as other budget providers.

Seems like you kind of agree with me that they are all pretty much as bad as one another?

It's just a pity these companies don't offer renewals at competative rates. If they did that I wouldn't bother to swap, once I found a reasonable ISP. The whole ethos of these offers they do is to get you to sign up in the hope you then go on at vastly inflated prices when your contract ends. I am noticing most contracts are now 24 months, presumably to claw back the extra costs involved with fibre?

The mid-contract price increases are also very unfair, given they have a guarenteed income for the contract length, but I think Ofcom are looking at these? Not that Ofcom are any real use, but it seems that is all we have to work with.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Their retail department from all accounts is poor. But TTB as a reseller is excellent.

Many other ISPs use TTB's backhaul services from your local exchange to the ISP network for ADSL and FTTC/VDSL services. This is reported to be a quality network.

It could be considered the retail service was sold too cheap for investment, adverts on bus shelters for broadband at £1.99 a month isn't going to pay many bills.

It could be considered the retail service was sold too cheap for investment

I think you have nailed it. Foreign companies bought many companies when the £ was low. The whizzkids borrow money to buy the firm, strip out whatever value they can, load their borrowing debt onto the company, and take it as dividends.

Now the fairytale of low interest rates has ended these companies like mortgage buyers face vastly increased repayments. I don't doubt TT is one of them.

In reply to a post by hk11:

Are TT really that bad?

In my experience no -
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/favlinker.php?Entr...

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

In reply to a post by hk11:

Are TT really that bad?

In my experience no -
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/favlinker.php?Entr...

This just shows that we all have different experiences (hearsay also doesn't help especially when related to negative comments), if we didn't we would all probably be using the same ISP. Some here have been bashing TT for years then admit their negative comments are actually from a friends experience. I have never used TT but would consider them when moving ISP.

Edit: Subject to them still existing

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Aug-23 16:04:31)

Good to hear.

I have a neighbour who is quite happy with them as well, they may be others.

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

In reply to a post by hk11:

Are TT really that bad?

In my experience no -
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/favlinker.php?Entr...

This just shows that we all have different experiences (hearsay also doesn't help especially when related to negative comments), if we didn't we would all probably be using the same ISP. Some here have been bashing TT for years then admit their negative comments are actually from a friends experience. I have never used TT but would consider them when moving ISP.

Edit: Subject to them still existing

You are right about hearsay, another one you often see is people slating TT and when asked how long they have been with them they admit they left years ago strange how they forget to mention that in their post.

I think TT's main problem was their phone support they got a bad reputation for not helping (reading off a script etc) and you could spend hours on the phone while they ran line tests etc with no outcome at the end, my main problem was they were in India and i am from Cumbria so they had a nightmare trying to understand what i was saying due to my accent this lead to a frustrating experience that i am glad i never had to repeat.

The next time i had a problem i used the community forum which was great but obviously not 24/7 support then live chat became a thing and that's how i contacted them if i needed to as the accent wasn't a problem any more, i have used live chat a couple of times and have always found the customer service person helpful thankfully since moving to FTTC i haven't had to use it at all.

BTW i am not a TT fanboy i know some customers have a nightmare with support and i can understand them giving the ISP both barrels in places like this, i am sure its the same for all ISP's non of them are perfect.

In reply to a post by hk11:

It's just a pity these companies don't offer renewals at competative rates. If they did that I wouldn't bother to swap, once I found a reasonable ISP. The whole ethos of these offers they do is to get you to sign up in the hope you then go on at vastly inflated prices when your contract ends. I am noticing most contracts are now 24 months, presumably to claw back the extra costs involved with fibre?

The mid-contract price increases are also very unfair, given they have a guarenteed income for the contract length, but I think Ofcom are looking at these? Not that Ofcom are any real use, but it seems that is all we have to work with.

Plusnet was ok, i only went to plusnet as they were the only ones who could give me a quick connection when I was moving from the Wireless network I was on. My phone line had been disconnected for 2 years and other providers just gave me silly dates. I was not sure about plusnet as they belong to BT and I detest BT, but they were fine for me for 9 years. i have never used another provider on FTTC. My brother use Shell and to be honest that works fine, the router is not great, but it does the job. Talk Talk got their reputation more or less when they first started with a Free broadband forever, or something like that and they could not cope and it just went on for there and also that they got hacked by a teenager.

as i said above, I was with plusnet for over 9 years and was willing to stay with them if they offered me a good deal on FTTC, but all the wanted me to do was to go on FTTP on a 24-month contract or sign back up to FTTC on a 24-month contract, which would have still cost a few quid more than what I was paying before. I was not going to go for a 24-month contract. i t was funny when I cancelled they then decided to come up with a decent offer for FTTP on a 18 month contract, too late by then I had already ordered zzoomm.

I agree with you about the mid-contract price increase, I know costs increase, but once you are in a contract that should be it. at least my costs are fixed for 12 months with Zzoomm and I pay the same now as I did with Plusnet, but I get 500Mb/s not 36Mb/s, not that the speed bothers me.

We will see what happens after the 12 months, but I expect I will go down to the 150Mb/s, normal price of that is £29.99, so about £5 more than what I am paying now, I don't want to pay £35 for 500Mb.s as I don't really need the speed.

In reply to a post by dect:

This just shows that we all have different experiences (hearsay also doesn't help especially when related to negative comments), if we didn't we would all probably be using the same ISP. Some here have been bashing TT for years then admit their negative comments are actually from a friends experience. I have never used TT but would consider them when moving ISP.

Edit: Subject to them still existing

My problem with Tal Talk is their customer service, having to cope with it on behalf of different people over the years,It is like pulling teeth. Sky is not much better to be honest. Seems to be the thing with large providers, apart from plusnet, they were ok.

I have not had to deal with Talk Talk for a couple of years now, so things may have changed, but I doubt it.

In reply to a post by dect:

I have never used TT but would consider them when moving ISP.

Same here. I do have some work colleagues whom had no issues with TT until recently, and found the customer services is poor by phone, but great on the TT Community forum. For the low cost, it makes sense !

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Same here. I do have some work colleagues whom had no issues with TT until recently, and found the customer services is poor by phone, but great on the TT Community forum. For the low cost, it makes sense !

Yeah, some people used to say that, but a forum is not much cop if you don't have a connection. Those same people say use a smartphone to access the forum., but using forums on a tiny screen is awful.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I'm glad TalkTalk bought Virtual1 and had time to turn it into just another channel provider that nickel and dime for everything right before realising they can't afford all these things, thanks guys.

+1
I have two Virtual1 circuits and my experience via my reseller has progressively gone downhill over the last 12 months especially. I’ll be moving one service to Vorboss and the other won’t be getting renewed.

Yeah, some people used to say that, but a forum is not much cop if you don't have a connection. Those same people say use a smartphone to access the forum., but using forums on a tiny screen is awful.

If you lose connection but can get online with your phone google "Talktalk online chat" the top link will take you to a page where you should see this (below) if you scroll down the page, disable adblockers or the chat link will not show.


LIVE CHAT
Our Chat experts are on hand to help you with any concerns, such as questions about your bill or to help you resolve any technical problems with your service. Please see our Live chat opening hours for each department.



.

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Sat 05-Aug-23 10:49:40)

In reply to a post by hk11:

Seems like you kind of agree with me that they are all pretty much as bad as one another?

The cheap ones, sure, pretty much all of them. It's the main reason they're cheap. Some expensive ones are as bad and are very poor value.

Most of the extra cost goes towards support. Most networks are much of muchness, with extra investment in capacity relatively small as regulations on performance are pretty strict.

To be honest TT are quite bad. I was a TT FTTC customer on a 2 year contract. The Customer Service is a big scam. I was promised that I'll get a new telephone line as part of a 2 year deal. But instead an Openreach engineer came and refused to install a new line and only installed an NTE5C Faceplate.

I could've signed an 18 month contract with a £70 amazon voucher and bought that NTE5C Faceplate separately from amazon. But I was basically cheated by live support chat in order to persuade me to take their deal.

The internet service is also quite poor. Although the speed is fine, latency is fine. But when it comes to reliability, it is not good. Throughout the 2 years every 10 days or so the connection would go down despite the router showing as connected! This meant that the internet was connected to the FTTC exchange but the TalkTalk connection would go down.

Even if you had a high connection up time, it means nothing as many of these days there's no live connection but the router will show as connected!

Also every few weeks TalkTalk would announce scheduled maintenance's. During this maintenance the internet connection will be down for at least 10-20 minutes. Those maintenance's are random and I only had to login to their website on the day the connection was down to find out that my service was down due to their scheduled maintenance. What is this maintenance for? Why so regularly?

Now I am with BT FTTC last 13 months and this service has been rock solid. I've never had my BT service go down even if the router showed as connected. But with TalkTalk the connection will show on but the service will be down, no internet connectivity but router settings will show connected.

Anyone else who is a TalkTalk customer will tell you the same experience as myself! If anyone says they've never experienced this, they'd be lying!

Although I'll be honest, it was still miles better than my previous ADSL EO Line service. But my ADSL EO Line service was faulty. TalkTalk was my first FTTC package that I signed up in February 2020, it was good as my first experience. But I don't think I'll choose TalkTalk in near future especially with Community Fibre being available here now.

Oh, and on top of that after the 2 year contract had ended my £20 monthly cost went up to £36 and eventually £40 a month! I quickly switched to BT Home Essentials 2 for £20 at that time. TT tried to lure me again by price matching for £20 a month. But that wasn't good enough when their service is so poor to begin with.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I was promised that I'll get a new telephone line as part of a 2 year deal.

Not sure this was TT's fault, with best intensions from the TT rep Openreach are always going to use existing E and D sides to a property unless you order a new service before cancelling the old one once its up and running. The engineer on the day will use the routing they have been provided with unless they can prove a fault exists.

Highlights why I do everything by email as firms tend to promise you the world on the phone then deny it when things go wrong.

My neighbour is with BT and like you sings their praises, but I realy only need a basic service.

Costs doubling when contract ends is typical and Ofcom should step in and stop this, but they won't actually do anything that helps the general public.

The forced fibre rollout is good for those that need high speed, but they shouldn't be forcing people to pay double when they don't need the speed, especially when the new lines don't even include a phone.

Nothing wrong with charging extra for support, but the actual connection is pretty much universal.

I'm just hoping my new provider will actually read what I send them in the event of a complaint as my old one certainly did not.

In reply to a post by hk11:

Highlights why I do everything by email as firms tend to promise you the world on the phone then deny it when things go wrong.

My neighbour is with BT and like you sings their praises, but I realy only need a basic service.

Costs doubling when contract ends is typical and Ofcom should step in and stop this, but they won't actually do anything that helps the general public.

The forced fibre rollout is good for those that need high speed, but they shouldn't be forcing people to pay double when they don't need the speed, especially when the new lines don't even include a phone.

I know a couple of people with BT and sing their praises as well, but they are not cheap and even then their customer service is not great when things go wrong, as it is difficult to understand the person you are talking to and like Talk Talk and others they go by a script and won't go from it. For new customers for 36Mb/s it is £32.99, that includes phone and full fibre, they will not allow you to go to FTTC if there is fibre available and they shove you into a 24 month contract. EE is the same, but about £4 cheaper, but again forced onto fibre with a 24 month contract.

This seems to be the norm these days, a 24-month contract, I thought we had gone away from this. It seems the only way to get a shorter contract is to got with Shell or Onestream, or maybe Sky.

You are like me, only need a basic service, I went to Zzoomm because of the price and it was cheaper than others, even if I stayed on FTTC, I have no need for super duper speed,, having 500Mb/s have not made a lot of difference in how I do things. Granted, download files to the PC is faster, but I can wait.
Zzoomm offered me a good price that was cheaper than FTTC and a 12-month contract, if Zzoom was not available to me, I would still be on FTTC via something like shell or one stream since their prices are better than what Plusnet was offering and one stream offers a 12 month contract for their 36Mb/s package for £25 a month.

Edited by zyborg47 (Sat 05-Aug-23 22:49:00)

I really got cheesed off finding offers that when you clicked on them, told you they were not available.

In reply to a post by hk11:

I really got cheesed off finding offers that when you clicked on them, told you they were not available.

I know of people who had that problem, I did not as I never really looked that hard when I was with Plusnet, towards the end of my contract I had a look to see what was available and then just as the contract ended Plusnet came up with a decent offer.
I notice on your sig you have been with a lot of providers, I presume most of them were in the ADSL and dial up days. I changed a fair bit in dial up days, ADSL I think I had 5 different ones, BT, Eclipse, Metronet, AOL for a month, and another which I can not remember the name of, just before I went to allpay wireless broadband for 2 years and then after that moved to Plusnet for 9 and now with Zzoomm. If all goes well I expect I will stay with zzoomm as long as they keep going and offer a good service and don't go crazy on their prices. I can't be bothered to go through the hassle of getting another FTTp connection and to be honest now I am away from Out of reach I prefer to stay away from them.

Can anyone else resell via the Zzoomm infrastructure like ISPs do on Openreach infrastructure? If not that wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.

In reply to a post by dect:

Can anyone else resell via the Zzoomm infrastructure like ISPs do on Openreach infrastructure? If not that wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.

I don't believe Zzoomm wholesale unlike Openreach or CityFibre. The third (much smaller) multi-ISP network is Fibre&Wireless, but then all the others are ISP owned/run infrastructure. (toob, building in my town has some agreement with CityFibre, but it seems only one way, CF areas can buy toob services, but I couldn't buy from a CF using ISP like AAISP sadly).

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

To be honest TT are quite bad. I was a TT FTTC customer on a 2 year contract. The Customer Service is a big scam. I was promised that I'll get a new telephone line as part of a 2 year deal. But instead an Openreach engineer came and refused to install a new line and only installed an NTE5C Faceplate.

I fail to see how that's Talktalk's fault. They will have ordered a new line.
It's the Openreach engineer who will have reused existing infra to connect you up. That would have happened with any provider that ordered you a "new line".
Providers have no control over Openreach using existing pairs. They can't force them to literally pull in new pairs if there is existing capacity.

Talktalk's CS (particularly by phone) is rubbish. Live chat and the online forum is pretty good and UK based.

The only downside to their network is the lack of IPV6.
I got full speed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on their gigabit package until a migrated recently.
The lack of PPP meant higher throughput than any other Openreach provider could have managed (apart from Sky).

Edited by j0hn83 (Sun 06-Aug-23 11:11:57)

Yes, I tend to change every year as the provider I am with at the time don't offer me a deal for extending my contract. The list goes right back to dial-up as only had fibre for Six months or so. I was happy with ADSL, bar maybe upload speeds. I don't get much better speed on 40/10 now than I did on Plusnet AdSl two years ago!

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I can't be bothered to go through the hassle of getting another FTTp connection and to be honest now I am away from Out of reach I prefer to stay away from them.

I really don't understand this. They apparently provided a very solid network to you for years. This seems childish. They offered a compelling product that someone used to make a quality retail product I would be all over it.

An FTTP install is hardly a massive hassle and can be rid of a pointless copper set up.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

To be honest TT are quite bad. I was a TT FTTC customer on a 2 year contract. The Customer Service is a big scam. I was promised that I'll get a new telephone line as part of a 2 year deal. But instead an Openreach engineer came and refused to install a new line and only installed an NTE5C Faceplate.

I fail to see how that's Talktalk's fault. They will have ordered a new line.
It's the Openreach engineer who will have reused existing infra to connect you up. That would have happened with any provider that ordered you a "new line".
Providers have no control over Openreach using existing pairs. They can't force them to literally pull in new pairs if there is existing capacity.

Talktalk's CS (particularly by phone) is rubbish. Live chat and the online forum is pretty good and UK based.

The only downside to their network is the lack of IPV6.
I got full speed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on their gigabit package until a migrated recently.
The lack of PPP meant higher throughput than any other Openreach provider could have managed (apart from Sky).

Actually it was part of the contract agreement. The £60 new line installation fee was chalked off as free from the contract paper!

I wanted a new line because in the past when we were renting our flat an ex-tenant had ordered Openreach to install a new line and this line is extremely long. At least 15 meters of extra wiring in the flat. It circulates the entire corridor of our flat at the top of the walls. I wanted for aesthetic purpose to have a shorter copper line and because previously I was having poor connection with ADSL constantly dropping out, for the benefit of the doubt I wanted a shorter line in case it helped reduce interference.

Nevertheless, the Openreach engineer ensured me not to worry as now with FTTC the connection will naturally be more reliable. He kept insisting in agitation "do you know how much copper is running outside", "at least a good 500 meters", "cutting 5-10 meters of extra copper won't make a difference, trust me"! That was the words of this engineer and then later on he went outside for around 20 minutes to check the connection at the cabinet and came back to install the NTE5C Faceplate. He cooled down and was in a better mood and said that he was happy to cut the copper but didn't have pliers with himself, unfortunately!

To be honest, that was not fair and not what I was expecting. I basically lost a good £70 amazon voucher at that time with Uswitch offer for an 18 month contract. I went with TalkTalk 24 months sacrificing this £70 voucher with the hope of a new line. I could've then had the old one removed that's just ruining the aesthetics unnecessarily.

Now my only hope in future if Openreach FTTP comes and FTTC and copper gets retired only then I can safely remove it myself or if the Openreach in future removes the copper line as part of the FTTP upgrade. I doubt they'll do it, but only then it will be safe for me to remove that copper.

At one point, I was contemplating of following some Youtube guide to cut that copper line myself and shorten it but I simply don't have the guts to do it as I'm not a professional and if I can't do it properly I'll be left without an internet connection.

Even though Community Fibre are now available here, I can't remove this copper myself in case I need FTTC as a handy choice for future.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

Anyone else who is a TalkTalk customer will tell you the same experience as myself! If anyone says they've never experienced this, they'd be lying!

Do you honestly believe all TT customers have had a bad experience if you do you fall into the category of haters i and others mention in this and my thread below, here are two happy customers and believe me we are not lying -


https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/favlinker.php?Entr...

I'm not a hater of TT, I'm just giving my personal experience in the 2 years of using their service. It is a genuine series of complaints that I have. The connection to show as Connected when no web pages are opening is something I have only experienced with TalkTalk!

There has never been another ISP that I have used that shows router setting as connected but none of the web pages or peer networking as working. I once had this experience for 50 minutes! No router reboot was fixing the problem as it was from their end.

You are only showing your happiness in terms of your speed test results. Speed is not everything. I also had 80/20Mbps much better tests than your 63Mbps but that doesn't mean overall I am happy with the service.

That's the problem with many of these positive reviews that you'll read online. I've read plenty of those 5 star reviews pointing how happy they are with the speeds they are receiving. It is not all about speed. It's about the latency, reliability of the connection keeping a hold of. The quality of the router, the packet losses, the customer service, the honesty of a company, etc.

I'm not denying that you may be happy with your speeds. But I'll be honestly surprised if you haven't experienced connection downtime while the router is being shown as connected and the lighting of the router being white!

This is not a problem unique to my particular location or area. Absolutely all of the customers throughout the country simultaneously report that their connections have gone down during the TalkTalk scheduled maintenance. This is the website I was looking at when I was a TalkTalk customer. https://downdetector.co.uk/status/talktalk/
Everytime my service was down the graph chart was rocketing upwards and the comment section was full of people telling their same experience.

The router will show connected but not a single web page will open. Then again, I've also weirdly experienced situations where certain websites will not work due to TalkTalk server side and then they resolving because TalkTalk fixed the server side. This is not a problem I have experienced with another ISP.

BT is far better than TalkTalk imho. If I was just a complaining machine by nature I would've criticized BT as well, but it really is a better service than TalkTalk. Now I can't comment on FTTP as I don't have FTTP. Perhaps TalkTalk as a service on Openreach FTTP and CityFibre do perform better. But then again I also don't know if their service goes down together with their maintenance.

So you didn't want a new line, you wanted the master socket re-locating? As for an installation engineer not having a pair of pliers with him . . . .

Edited by GonePostal (Sun 06-Aug-23 17:56:36)

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I'm not a hater of TT, I'm just giving my personal experience in the 2 years of using their service. It is a genuine series of complaints that I have. The connection to show as Connected when no web pages are opening is something I have only experienced with TalkTalk!

Your exact words are below you accused all TT customers that say they haven't had a problem liars just because you have, you are wrong!

Anyone else who is a TalkTalk customer will tell you the same experience as myself! If anyone says they've never experienced this, they'd be lying!

Tell me honestly, do you think if you put that new line request in with another ISPs you would have got a different outcome?

Edited by deleted (Sun 06-Aug-23 17:04:52)

In reply to a post by dect:

Can anyone else resell via the Zzoomm infrastructure like ISPs do on Openreach infrastructure? If not that wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.

No, they just sell their own products over their own network. I can understand where you are coming from, that was one of the things that went through my head, but I am not bothered now as long as it keeps working and the price is ok. then again Virgin as far as i know you can only get Virgin products.

Things may change as time goes on, you never know.

In reply to a post by hk11:

Yes, I tend to change every year as the provider I am with at the time don't offer me a deal for extending my contract. The list goes right back to dial-up as only had fibre for Six months or so. I was happy with ADSL, bar maybe upload speeds. I don't get much better speed on 40/10 now than I did on Plusnet AdSl two years ago!

i could not be bothered with that, If I can get a deal then I will stay. If you are getting poor speed then you are either a fair distance away from the cabinet or there is a fault somewhere or your ISP is slowing things down somewhere. Most of the time I got around 36Mb/s down on FTTC, ADSL was 3 if I was lucky.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

[
I really don't understand this. They apparently provided a very solid network to you for years. This seems childish. They offered a compelling product that someone used to make a quality retail product I would be all over it.

An FTTP install is hardly a massive hassle and can be rid of a pointless copper set up.
[/quote]


I am using FTTP, but an alt network, but if I changed to Openreach FTTP I would have to go through having it installed again. That is why I will stay as I am now as long as Zzoomm keeps going.

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I'm not a hater of TT, I'm just giving my personal experience in the 2 years of using their service. It is a genuine series of complaints that I have. The connection to show as Connected when no web pages are opening is something I have only experienced with TalkTalk!

Your exact words are below you accused all TT customers that say they haven't had a problem liars just because you have, you are wrong!

Anyone else who is a TalkTalk customer will tell you the same experience as myself! If anyone says they've never experienced this, they'd be lying!

I am sure some Talk Talk users have a good service, I know of one who does, they swear by Talk Talk, he gets laughed at in the group chat I go in They are only taking the pee.

In reply to a post by hk11:

I don't get much better speed on 40/10 now than I did on Plusnet ADSL two years ago!

Thats not strictly true is it? you are likely to be getting the full 40 Mbps at the router but if you persist in using legacy kit to test the speed via wifi then you're always likely to get poor results. Makes sense for you to have the slow 40/10 package in your situation as you are causing a bottle neck by the way you access the internet.

In reply to a post by dect:

Tell me honestly, do you think if you put that new line request in with another ISPs you would have got a different outcome?

I might have had a different outcome where a more reputable ISP might have asked for a follow up/feedback how the installation went ahead! As this is part of good customer service.

But that was not the case with my experience from TalkTalk. After the engineer finished off with his visit, there was absolutely no follow up from TalkTalk to ask me whether I was happy with the service of the Openreach engineer visit.

I believe with another ISP like Andrews & Arnold they'll follow up because I read reviews from other people using more reputable ISPs that they follow up to confirm that everything was fine.

Nevertheless, I didn't bother to further chase TalkTalk on this matter as the service did end up being reliable after all (except for the down time from TalkTalk end from time to time).

In reply to a post by Jack_Hackett:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I'm not a hater of TT, I'm just giving my personal experience in the 2 years of using their service. It is a genuine series of complaints that I have. The connection to show as Connected when no web pages are opening is something I have only experienced with TalkTalk!

Your exact words are below you accused all TT customers that say they haven't had a problem liars just because you have, you are wrong!

Anyone else who is a TalkTalk customer will tell you the same experience as myself! If anyone says they've never experienced this, they'd be lying!

I genuinely believe all TalkTalk customers at some point have experienced connection downtime even when the router was on.
I know this was not technical problem from my end or cabinet exchange/SNR, etc. Because I watched closely the router settings and at that time I was having 6dB and the connection in the router settings was showing as connected.

Those down times were on average 10-50 minutes without an internet connection and usually they were night time between 12am to 3am once every few weeks to a couple of months. The connection would magically return without the router being rebooted or the connection uptime resetting.

Now if you have a different sleep pattern where you go to sleep earlier than 12am during that time maybe you haven't yet experienced the TalkTalk downtime?

All devices would lose connection so it's not a technical fault with my Ethernet of the computer. The fact that all of these problems vanished after my switch to BT last year suggests that all these problems were related to the TalkTalk service.

Some customers may simply be happy because they don't view this as a problem. I'm an online chess player and I am rated 2300+ on Lichess, I take my ratings seriously. I hate to have my connection drop and rating to be lost especially when I'm winning. Luckily Lichess gives a 120 second recovery time to return back to your classical game and 30 seconds on Blitz/Bullet. That way I quickly login from my mobile phone as I have 750MB of data with RWG Mobile.

Other users who are not gamers like my dad will not care for a brief connection loss. For them the service may be viewed as fine/good. But for me that's not a good service.

Ok, if you don't believe me check this out! https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Service-Status-D... Just had a look Planned Maintenance
Planned website maintenance on 8th August 2023
5 hours ago

We'll be updating some of our websites on Tuesday 8th August 2023

Start time - 3:00 AM
End time - 7:00 AM

Huh, I'm not surprised to see this, kinda reflects what I have just written above ^^. It's very likely that during this time if you tried accessing any websites using TalkTalk you will experience brief outages!

But of-course if you were sleeping during this time you'll be left with an impression "what a great service TalkTalk is"!

These TalkTalk planned maintenance's are constant! It is like Windows Update! At least I can disable Windows Update on my Windows 10 system, but I can't stop TalkTalk from continuing their planned maintenance schedule. Now maybe, just maybe it doesn't affect absolutely everyone at the same time. But whenever my connection with TalkTalk went down I always looked at that website and happened to find that their maintenance schedule seemed to have coincided with my connection downtime.

Most providers will have some maintenance periods like this. A&A advertise similar overnight windows quite regularly.

TT advertising them in advance is a definite positive - anecdotally some providers simply don't bother and rely on them being quick and in the small hours to mitigate the disruption to customers.

Services and infrastructure need maintenance and upgrades. If you subscribe to a single-circuit service and expect it to run 24/7/365/years without any maintenance downtime then you're being both unrealistic and asking for an inherently insecure service.

Most leased line services will only guarantee 99.99% maximum (just under an hour of downtime per year) on a single circuit. For this you pay at least an order of magnitude more for the service.

To achieve more requires multiple circuits, multiple routers, precisely to enable such maintenance to take place. You pay even more

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

I might have had a different outcome where a more reputable ISP might have asked for a follow up/feedback how the installation went ahead! As this is part of good customer service.

But that was not the case with my experience from TalkTalk. After the engineer finished off with his visit, there was absolutely no follow up from TalkTalk to ask me whether I was happy with the service of the Openreach engineer visit.

I believe with another ISP like Andrews & Arnold they'll follow up because I read reviews from other people using more reputable ISPs that they follow up to confirm that everything was fine.

Nevertheless, I didn't bother to further chase TalkTalk on this matter as the service did end up being reliable after all (except for the down time from TalkTalk end from time to time).

Interesting you use the word reputable, I can remember a quote many many years ago where they said in the south of England, Ford cars broke down more than any other car but when you dug into the data it was because there was more Ford cars on the road than any other make of car, you see TT as not being reputable because you didn't get the outcome you wanted and say a call back could have resolved the issue I would say that is naive.

Edited by deleted (Mon 07-Aug-23 17:06:01)

We shall see next week when I get the 89/20 service.

In reply to a post by ionic:

Most providers will have some maintenance periods like this. A&A advertise similar overnight windows quite regularly.

TT advertising them in advance is a definite positive - anecdotally some providers simply don't bother and rely on them being quick and in the small hours to mitigate the disruption to customers.

Services and infrastructure need maintenance and upgrades. If you subscribe to a single-circuit service and expect it to run 24/7/365/years without any maintenance downtime then you're being both unrealistic and asking for an inherently insecure service.

Most leased line services will only guarantee 99.99% maximum (just under an hour of downtime per year) on a single circuit. For this you pay at least an order of magnitude more for the service.

To achieve more requires multiple circuits, multiple routers, precisely to enable such maintenance to take place. You pay even more

In the case of TalkTalk those maintenance nearly always result in brief outages. The 99.99% reliability does not apply to TalkTalk.
I have used TalkTalk for 2 years and I can compare it side by side with BT, Plusnet and Sky previously.

Assuming that there have been maintenance schedules for BT this past 13 months, I have not experienced a single connection outage!

In the case of TalkTalk the connection goes down even at times when there are no planned maintenance's and when you then google to see if TalkTalk is down it appears that there are complaints right at the same hour of time.

Of-course it is unrealistic of me to expect 100% connection uptime 24/7/365 days a year. But in the case of TalkTalk the service will be down 10 minutes minimum and on some rare occasions up to 2 hours! This is not an acceptable level of service. Even 10 minutes down time is not acceptable and I'll be frank, I have never experienced such long down time with any other previous ISP with the exception of area outage. When my whole area was affected a few years ago, 18 hours I was without internet but that's understandable and not fault of the ISP.

Under an hour of downtime per year would be great if that was the experience I had with TalkTalk! If I were to calculate and add up all the downtime with TalkTalk it would add to at least 5 hours of down time in a year with fragments of 10-50 minutes every few weeks. I'm not making this up.

I'm so satisfied with BT's FTTC service that despite Community Fibre (FTTP) being available here last 8 months (since 03/12/2022) I have not felt the urge to rush switching to Community Fibre yet!

Had I been with TalkTalk I would've long switched to Communty Fibre probably from day one when the service went live! But switching to FTTP doesn't feel like an emergency for me yet especially not after I had been upgraded to FTTC on October 2019 from previous EO Line.

If some people are happy with TalkTalk then good for them! But if I am a well wisher I wouldn't recommend this provider as I can't promise that you'll be happy!

What times are these outages happening? If things are going offline between 1am and 4am then I don't really care how frequently that happens. Obviously different if someone works nights or needs to work an on-call rotation.

Yes, these outages are indeed happening mostly between 1am to 4am. I've experienced it once at 12am for 10 minutes and at 12:10am connection returned. Initially when I experienced this I thought something was wrong with my network adapter but then when connection was down for the other computers as well, I knew it was not my computer.

Now of-course most people who have a different sleep pattern may not be affected by those outages but that's also why they are not noticing problems.

Most users don't login to router settings to find out if connection has been stable or not. Also in the case of TalkTalk on many occasions the router connection sync doesn't reset or show as disconnected. That makes it even worse because you don't know that the connection was down but you look at router settings and it may show 10, 20, 30, 60, etc day connection uptime but there were still outages while the connection was on. The light will also not necessarily lit orange.

This is a very unique problem that I've experienced. I've been using the internet since my first ADSL service in 2003 with Tiscali. Before that in 1999 I used Dial Up and I've never had such an experience with another ISP that would show connected but for it to have outages with the ISP while the core network being unaffected at the exchange or cabinet.

That's why you see happy customers because they are not affected as they go to bed during that time or only do speed tests and are happy with the speeds or latency and that's all that matters to them.

That's why I don't rush to write positive or negative reviews. I'd need to have to spend enough time with an ISP before I conclude whether I'm satisfied or not.
My experience with BT FTTC last 13 months since switching to them has been positive and never experienced those intermittent outages during late night.

With TalkTalk I've also experienced multiple outages on the same day night time where briefly connection would go down at 1am for a few minutes and then again around 5am for a few minutes again. This may be due to their maintenance but again, that's not acceptable.

I genuinely believe all TalkTalk customers at some point have experienced connection downtime even when the router was on.

No one is saying we dont have down time what we are saying is TT are not the unreliable steaming pile of **** their haters would have us believe.

Many of these haters (as has been said) left them years ago but still jump on the bandwagon every time it passes by!
.

In reply to a post by ionic:

I believe with another ISP like Andrews & Arnold they'll follow up because I read reviews from other people using more reputable ISPs that they follow up to confirm that everything was fine.

You need a reality check.

Having ordered a new copper broadband line from A&A and 2 VOIP lines (years apart) I've never once had them (or any other provider) contact me to check how the install went.
I've never seen anyone else comment that they have had their provider do this either.

A&A have a good reputation because of their good network and good reactive customer support.
They don't routinely go around messaging customers proactively checking that installs went smoothly.

They can see from their monitoring when things go wrong and even then they are likely to wait for the customer to report issues to them.
Even a small provider like A&A has way too many customers and too many orders to be messaging them all asking how an install went.
It's a very small team of staff who work at A&A.
There may be the odd exception to that but there's no way they contact all customers who have made orders or are having installs done just to see how it went.

You're making comment on a provider you have absolutely no experience with.
You're also expecting way too much even from a pricey provider, nevermind from a budget provider.

Edited by j0hn83 (Tue 08-Aug-23 19:52:58)

It's true I've never ordered a service from A&A but I've read good things and reviews from people including BT, Plusnet, EE customers where when they have had technical problems customer support was much more helpful in promptly organising and booking an Openreach engineer appointment. But the same cannot be said for TalkTalk. You'll read loads of reviews in broadband.co.uk and trustpilot saying TalkTalk were slow to inform them when an engineer will be booked.

I myself did contact TalkTalk a couple of years ago when my upload speed had dropped significantly to 10Mbps following a connection drop and they had call centres from India trying to help sort problems when they are not well informed what's going on.

I have also received text messages from BT asking for customer feedback and ratings based on recent broadband experience.

In the past I have had Sky engineer visit my property when I had ADSL problems with constant drop-outs and I did receive an email, based on recent engineer visit to ask whether it went well. I also once had to call out Sky to inform them that there was a fault with no telephone line working but broadband was working and that was resolved within an hour following my phone call an engineer came to visit my property connected some device to the telephone socket for testing and fixed the issue. I did then get an email saying the problem is now resolved and if it has not, to contact customer service again.

With TalkTalk the only positive was that I had a £5 bill credit refund following a complaint regarding service outage.

Paradoxically TalkTalk is no longer a budget provider. If you look at their recent monthly contracts they have raised their prices to £28 a month with a £15 activation fee. They are now more expensive than Sky, Vodafone, Shell Energy, Plusnet, Now Broadband, Onestream, etc. While at the same time no longer offering vouchers.

When I signed up initially they were £20 a month and they price hiked mid-contract to £22 and then eventually it jumped to £36 and then £40 a month after the 24 month contract had ended. This happened without being informed, I only went to login to the TalkTalk account page and saw this steep price rise.

The service you get from TalkTalk isn't in ratio to what you're paying.
Actually BT is now around £1 cheaper a month than TalkTalk! £29.99 a month with £50 reward card on a 24 month contract. If you calculate at the end that's the equivalent to £27.90 a month. But with TalkTalk if you multiply 28x18=£504. 504+15 (setup fee) =£519. £519÷18=£28.83 a month.

That is actually almost a pound more expensive per month than BT while BT are also offering a much more reliable service. You're also getting access to over 5 million WiFi Hotspots which is really beneficial when outside and want to save data or if there is a service outage in your area.

If I'm expecting way too much then I wouldn't be here to say how much of a better service experience I am getting with BT these past 13 months compared to TalkTalk. Never came across an outage yet, but with TalkTalk it will happen every few weeks. And these are not 1-2 minute drop-outs they are 10-50 minutes without an internet connection!

I heard that BT do this, but not A&A.

Hi j0hn83

I had FTTP installed last Monday by A&A and yesterday received and email from A&A Sales asking me to give them a call if I had any comments or technical issues. It went on to say that, "As an ISP, we invest far more into our networks, facilities and support staff than we do into our advertising, relying almost entirely on word of mouth, and reputation." They also asked if I will rate A&A on Trustpilot (I will be doing that later)

I have been with A&A for some years, ADSL, VDSL when it became available and now FTTP I'm obviously a happy customer as otherwise I can always vote with my feet. I have also been responsible for installing A&A in another premises and their VoIP elsewhere.

Cheers!

I was surprised to learn a few months ago that A&A still publish everyone's ONT serial numbers on their website, IDNET were told by Openreach to stop doing it.