TalkTalk SimplyBroadband

After putting the price up for essentials by £1 they are now offering SimplyBroadband @ £2.50 ( No calls included ) Im glad they let me go early TBH

Essentials is to be essentials tv. Non recording youview and broadband entry level service

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Essentials is to be essentials tv. Non recording youview and broadband entry level service

What is the point?

simply broadband is cheap, maybe too cheap. cheaper than what i am paying even if i added fibre onto it, but the thought of going with Talk Talk fills me with horror.

i will stay as I am I think, not that I have got much choice for another 6 months or so.

opening the cupboard at night used to fill me with horror, but times move on you know

I've never been a TT fanboy, but I can honestly say I've had no issues for the last two years.

Now on FTTC 37mbit/2mbit for £114 upfront and £10.75 a month (this includes the £5 extra for unlimited calls aswell)

Seems to be no issues with p2p when I use it. My pings are hugely lowered (66ms to 40ms to Hamburg), googleDNS from 40ms to 25ms, but all in all it is good value for money.

i just could not bring myself to use Talk Talk, no matter how cheap, their customer service is a shambles and their home safe is too much spying for my liking and being in Huawei bed, also makes my shiver.
Bad enough that Huawei is all over the Uk as it is.

I think I have homesafe turned off, not sure if the StalkStalk thing is still active.

Also, you don't have to use the supplied home router.

It don't matter if you got homesafe off or on, your browsing still end up going through Huawei systems. Also Huawei is in the exchange as well. For some reason TalkTalk and Bt seems to think Huawei is fine.

i expect the system I use goes though some Huawei equipment at some stage, can't get away from it by the seems of it.

Anyway, Huawei or no Huawei, i still would nto use TalkTalk. and to be honest the prices they are doing now is too cheap and is just going to knock more small ISps out of business which is what TalkTalk want to do, juts like sky and Bt.

Adrian

for pity's sake stop banging on about the poor quality/ service etc of TT. You've never used it , nor have I but I got embroiled with them because of problems after my husband died .

Now leave 'em alone .

PLEASE

What **everyone** seems to FORGET.... > >

It is **impossible** to label the WHOLE country as 'having a bad TT service' ... :/

*every* ISP has good and bad areas - this is mainly due to **BT** not maintaining the quality and condition of the lines - a VERY difficult job, when they are usually in hard to reach areas, ruined by rain, farmers, builders... you name it....

It also depends on how you use it, your internal home connections, etc...

A friend has had TT for years,(AND moved twice!!) has had no problems at all... BUT then she only uses the phone package, all her kids only use one or two pages of internet a day....

I am a heavy user, so I decided to change to virgin CABLE , NOT for the service, but to escape the utter mess of too many ' middlemen' !!

Tesco (at my social club), is even worse down here in twick, middx, their first suggestion after I said the line is noisy, is check the filters???

it took 2 weeks of calls for them to realise, and send in the openworld guys...
- fault on line, you cannot use the BT line checker, it does not belong to them!!

Edited by deleted (Mon 07-Oct-13 10:12:31)

I agree, I know plenty of people who are on Talktalk and happy with it. Especially when the broadband costs £2.50 and the phone costs less than BT.

And they're not nearly paranoid enough to worry whether Chinese hardware is used on their connection!

In reply to a post by goldenoldie:

Adrian

for pity's sake stop banging on about the poor quality/ service etc of TT. You've never used it , nor have I but I got embroiled with them because of problems after my husband died .

Now leave 'em alone .

PLEASE

Nope, i will not leave TT alone.

What difference do it make to you anyway?
i may not have used TT, but i have seen other peoples TT connection and I have chatted to Talk Talk customer service department, if you can call it that a fair few times.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

I agree, I know plenty of people who are on Talktalk and happy with it. Especially when the broadband costs £2.50 and the phone costs less than BT.

And they're not nearly paranoid enough to worry whether Chinese hardware is used on their connection!

i use Chinese hardware here at home, my router and wi-fi adaptor is TP-link, so i have nothing against the chinese. It is just Huawei i have the problem with.


The reason why TT can make broadband so cheap is because they piggy back on another provider, if they had to fork out for their own network from the exchange to their customers, they would not be so cheap. also.
cheap is not always good, if they are that cheap then they must put very little back into the bit of network they do own, they certainly don't put anything back into their customer service, then again, neither does Bt.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

The reason why TT can make broadband so cheap is because they piggy back on another provider

Who? Do you mean CPW? It's the same firm.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

The reason why TT can make broadband so cheap is because they piggy back on another provider

Who? Do you mean CPW? It's the same firm.

No BT, TT still uses Bt exchanges and their phone lines.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

No BT, TT still uses Bt exchanges and their phone lines.

But then so does every other ISP (except Virgin Cable).

Or are you just referring to TT's non-LLU exchanges? In which case their offerings are not cheap.

I really don't see the point of your remark!

I've had Talk Talk for many years, including when it was Tiscali. It very rarely drops out and I've had no trouble at all. Their modem router failed a few years back and they sent a new one out promptly,
in fact they sent me 2 (one with 2 ethernet ports and the other with 4). So I now have a spare

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

No BT, TT still uses Bt exchanges and their phone lines.

But then so does every other ISP (except Virgin Cable).

Yep

Or are you just referring to TT's non-LLU exchanges? In which case their offerings are not cheap.

I really don't see the point of your remark!

LLU makes it even cheaper for them, than ISP's that don't use LLU, but then they are still using BT lines. If they had to start from scratch they would not be so cheap.

Anyway, i still thin it is too cheap and something have to go at that price and it is normally customer service.

In reply to a post by Rontom:

I've had Talk Talk for many years, including when it was Tiscali. It very rarely drops out and I've had no trouble at all. Their modem router failed a few years back and they sent a new one out promptly,
in fact they sent me 2 (one with 2 ethernet ports and the other with 4). So I now have a spare

Out of all the Talk Talk connections I have seen, only one have been any good, the rest just don't seem fit for the purpose, saying that looking at my next door neighbours new Infinty connection today, i don't think Bt is any better.

What's the problem with your neighbour's fibre service: is the modem on the end of a poorly routed "data extension" cable or is it an issue external to their property?

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by Rontom:

I've had Talk Talk for many years, including when it was Tiscali. It very rarely drops out and I've had no trouble at all. Their modem router failed a few years back and they sent a new one out promptly,
in fact they sent me 2 (one with 2 ethernet ports and the other with 4). So I now have a spare

Out of all the Talk Talk connections I have seen, only one have been any good, the rest just don't seem fit for the purpose, saying that looking at my next door neighbours new Infinty connection today, i don't think Bt is any better.

I do not usually get involved in these comments but...

My parents use TT (which I am writing this response from).. it's budget.. but it's a hell of a lot less issue than another provider my friends parents use... The Utility Warehouse... now all he has to say about them is how bad they are...

I have never called Customer Service because I use their forums.... and it was the same with BT when we used them...

Why did we switch? Simple.. to allow us access to an LLU network and reduce costs...

Now with all due respect if you do not have something constructive to add regarding Talk Talk I would kindly suggest you stop commenting about it...

I am in no way shape or form a TT Fanboy, but they are "good" at the budget they aim for... yes something suffers.. their Call Centre's... the same as the MORE expensive BT Retail service...

Rant over!

I've never understood these desires to knock ISPs as generically bad, rather than making specific criticisms of their services. Every company manages the occasional example of bad customer service, and every company manages to keep the majority of their customers happy, otherwise they'd go out of business.

Ultimately, there are a variety of services at a variety of price points using a variety of technologies, with a variety of usage limits, speeds and support packages. It is for the customer to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of the options available to him or her. If you go for a low cost provider, you accept the limitations inherent in a low cost service, but for many, low cost providers like TalkTalk and Sky are an excellent option.


To give an example, I left what is now Virgin Media's broadband service because of oversubscription problems, but remained a television customer. As that was ten years ago, and even then only related to my immediate area, it says nothing about Virgin generically, other than being an example of the issues that can arise from those technologies (cable modems, satellite and PON based FTTP) that use a shared local medium.

If more capacity is sold on a shared medium than it can support, after making a conservative allowance for contention, the resulting saturation will cause issues with excessive latency and jitter. Clearly, these issues are less likely to cause problems with FTTP (which, in the current BT Openreach implementation, uses a gigabit connection shared between no more than 12 users) than with satellite (where the bandwidth of a single spot beam is shared amongst users across a wide geographic area).

In reply to a post by 4M2:

What's the problem with your neighbour's fibre service: is the modem on the end of a poorly routed "data extension" cable or is it an issue external to their property?

The BTOR engineer seemed to have done a ok job, bit strange, but ok. He put a extension from downstairs to upstairs and that is where he have put the filter and connection for the modem. The extensions going to the other phones downstairs have been left alone, they just plug into the normal phone socket. Loads of filters on that extension. i may have a look one day to see why and how they are connected
According to my neighbour BTOR engineer said they are getting 33Mb/s according to his equipment, but they don't get that in reality. So it is either BT traffic managing or the Engineer was lying.


I have also noticed that any checks for fibre around here now comes up with max speed of 35, but 12 months ago it was 45, so that is a bit strange.

Filtered faceplate on the NTE5 downstairs, "data extension" to a rj11 socket upstairs for the modem and the voice extensions filtered from the filtered faceplate on the NTE5 downstairs (not ideal) but should be OK?

Ideally the modem is best located next to the NTE5 and connected to the external vdsl or adsl socket on the filtered faceplate (without the use of a "data extension") requiring an ethernet connection between the modem downstairs and the router upstairs (or combined modem/router box via ethernet to the computer upstairs.) Filtered voice extension would be from the back of the filtered faceplate (or from the existing NTE5 bottom plate if an interstitial plate is used) and the phone socket on the NTE5 filtered faceplate (or NTE5 bottom plate with interstitial plate) can also be used since that will also be filtered

Edited by 4M2 (Sun 27-Oct-13 13:50:38)

I just needed unlimited broadband and unlimited calls. I got the broadband essentials and anytime talk bundle for a fiver. Paid 12 months line rental in advance working out around 10.50 +5+2.50.
Nice

I'll reply to my own post so as not to appear to be replying to anyone specific..

I have another view point to add regarding TT.

Recently the speed at home, seems to have become slower.. so I did what I would normally do.. re boot the router in "off peak" hours.. and speed test it.. the speed came back as it was before..

I then decided to use the forums at TalkTalk to ask for the profile to be checked and changed if necessary.. initially I was asked to follow a link, which in all essence told me to do what I had done already, and then gave me a link to request a call back...

I have never until that time, had that request made of me, and frankly it felt as though I was being fobbed off to technical support.

I decided to go back to the forum and express my concern and displeasure. One of the colleagues then advised she would look into the issue for me....

Now I am not sure if it's just because I moaned (which I felt the need to) or was how they deal with the issues now, but I feel as though things at TalkTalk have changed again.. and if this is how the "support" goes I will look to move accounts.

Anyway just my 2p's worth!