AOL and Talk Talk

Hi,

I have been with AOL for ten years. The speed and reliability are terrible so I rang them to say I am thinking of changing to BT. They said i would have a £89 cancellation fee due to mid contract. They then told me that I can move to Talk Talk instead which is with themselves and said that my broadband speed will be much faster. My question is- Are AOL and Talk Talk the same thing, and is this a con or will I get faster broad band with Talk Talk. Everything I read suggests AOL and Talk Talk are the same company. So am I already with TalkTalk without realising? Thank you for any advice.

AOL Broadband is owned and run by TalkTalk, but the way the service is run it is possible it will be better with TalkTalk.

As for being mid-contract, you must have agreed to some discount or upgrade in the last year or so, since long auto-renewing contracts are not allowed on broadband and telephone now.

In terms of better speeds, knowing what the connection speed, attenuation and noise margin figures are from your modem will help, AOL used to use Netgear so http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/stats/routers.html#netgear shows how to get these stats. Then it will be possible to see what faster ADSL/ADSL2+ might be possible.

Thankyou. Could you explain what you mean by how the services are run differently. I really want to make sure that the speed and connection is going to be superior to my current AOL one, otherwise think I will still move over to BT. Will it definitely be better? So to clarify AOL and TALKTALK are NOT the same?? Thank you.

AOL Broadband is a part of TalkTalk, but due to decisions made in how TalkTalk run their service it can often be worse than the main TalkTalk service.

As for who will be better, without seeing information about the current connection it is hard for anyone to say.

If your connection is running as fast as it can due to you being a long way from the telephone exchange, then switching providers may not help much, unless one of the newer faster fibre based services is available to you and you switch to that.

Thank you. They said something about the router having a dual something or other??? which would make it faster. We are not in an area that supports Fibre or infinity. I have done a check online and for this area BT and Talk Talk come up as fastest speed. Would AOL come under that heading of Talk talk as the fastest? Surely if TT is part of AOL this would apply wouldn't it? Therefore will my connection be any better or not? Hope I'm making sense.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Well for sure talktalks router is better than AOLs

dual band wireless ect

Daul band is irrelevant if you have adsl2+ only.

Aol use adsl often and iften have not upgraded people. Without the stats from the router very hard to say if talktalk or even bt will be better

While true if 6km from exchange and connection only 1Mbps it won't help much

Do you know what the name of the exchange is your line is connected to?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Daul band is irrelevant if you have adsl2+ only.

Not true if you have a LOT of neighbours all using WiFi on tablets and phones. Even if the WAN bandwidth is only 4megabit for everyone in the street, you can have WiFi congestion.

The OP should do speed tests on a laptop or desktop connected by ethernet cable.