TalkTalk Essentials or Sky

Thinking of getting either Talktalk essentials ADSL Broadband or the equivalent from Sky.

Does anyone here have Talktalk essentials? Wondered what contention etc was like, not that bothered about the support angle , am aware of the talktalk members forum.

Thanks

If you are talking about contention ratios, TT is 50:1 and Sky is 33:1.

My main issue with TT apart from appalling customer services was the fact my line synced at 12 Mbps and after a router reboot I got download speed of around 10 Mbps which dropped to a max speed of 6.8 Mbps (at any time of day or night) after about 2 hours. They said because the drop was less that 40% there wasn't a problem.

The last straw was when they terminated my service without warning or giving any reason why it was terminated.

Defined contention ratios went out the window years ago.

Thats what i thought, although concerned wanted to check that speeds were good and people wern't experiencing problems streaming iplayer etc at peak times?

On sky no issues on iplayer YouTube Netflix.
No slowdowns of torrents
Same speed all day at all houses I've had sky in.

No idea on talktalk but I know it feels slower than sky on a friends connection even though they sync higher... Probably due to the DNS used on TT.

Cashback at quidco, check that out!

Take anything but talk talk. Worst company I've had to deal with

I think the TalkTalk experience depends entirely on your exchange and the general usage of the others connected there.

I feel they underprovision the backhaul, maybe in the same way F1 cars carry less fuel than they need for the race (at top power), but this means they can offer a cheaper service.

On LLU 3.5mbit, most things were fine, 1080P streaming wasn't, but 720p was normally ok. Torrents were mostly full speed off-peak, but could crawl between 5-11pm and Sundays.

Have been on fibre for a week now, torrents mostly at full speed (once i'd upped uTorrent cache) not really seen any issues.

Back in the day 1st line support were a pain, 3rd line seemed to be the only ppl able to help with actual fault issues. Not used the forum for faults as I've had none for the past 4 years.

Paying £20.25/month for medium fibre, anytime calls and very happy with current deal (£10.75 per month and £114 years line rental in advance.

For me, my local Fiat dealership, We Are Electricals and BT have been the worst companies I've dealt with.

Has anyone else noticed these problems? I was under the impression that talktalk ran their network with no slow downs these days even at peak times?

I think you need to check on the talk talk actual forum boards direct. Most people on here do not use talk talk or have been bitten in the past a few years ago...

I have a few friends who use the talk talk adsl service and have no problem what so every. It just works.

If the price point fits then what do you have to loose. The same can be said for SKY, BT & the independents like vivaciti etc....

Speeds can depend on network/backhaul capacity constraints at the exchange in the area where you live. Even though TalkTalk are "totally unlimited", it is possible that speeds could slow at peak times because of this. However, this doesn't just apply to TalkTalk, but Sky and BT also. I remember reading not so long ago from some users who found Sky to be very slow at peak times, due to oversubscription. And we're on BT at work, with a good 8Mbps MaxADSL connection (syncs at max rate), but it is very clear that it gets nowhere near that in the evenings, where iPlayer stutters for example (no such problems on a TT LLU connection at the same exchange).

I'm not sure how good TalkTalk are at keeping up with demand these days, but the only time I've noticed slowdowns was around 3 years ago, but after a few weeks the speed went back up to normal after upgrades at my local exchange. I have a 10Mbps LLU connection and I'm very happy with it - never any problems with Lovefilm Instant, Netflix, iPlayer, etc and PS3 downloads nearly always transfer at the maximum speed my line is capable of.

The only real way to find out what the best option is speed-wise is to find out from others, on the same exchange as you, how good their connection is, etc?

Had it for 18 months and no bandwidth issues.

Of course what is good one week, may not be good the next. What other users are doing is the key, no ISP runs with enough bandwidth for all its users to be using their connection to their full extent at any one time, we would have to pay a lot more for that, or have a lot slower connections.

I would not have dreamed you were using Talk Talk. How times change, but that's the point. ISP's learn from their past mistakes and do change. Some get better and some get worse.

I do think now that ADSL is a true commodity solution that just works, no matter who you purchase the service from. Obviously there are exceptions, but it does look like this is now the case.

I assume thinkbroadband could create a graph about the number of ISP issues from the BB and this would show a downward trend on people having issues with ISP's in general and the overall speed is increasing. Another way could be to show the number of speedtests done per month over the last 3-5 years. Is this number going down because people are more satisfied with their service and can no longer be bothered to run a speedtest every week??