Is TalkTalk over Openreach FTTP any good?

Morning!

First timer here, apologies if I've posted on the wrong forum by mistake.

I'm a south-east London-based subscriber to BT's broadband and phone service who's just moved flats. Subsequent to the move, BT's customer service informed me that since I was moving from an Openreach FTTC-serviced property to an Openreach FTTP-serviced one, I'd have to sign up for a new contract (my old one had 9 months to go), which would lock me in for two whole years. Initially, I agreed to it, meaning I'd be on the same pricing tier as I was in my earlier flat (Fibre 2, I think, 76/20 Mb/s, with a landline – call charges were extra) at the same price as earlier (£ 34.19 per month). I later found out that they'd offer a new customer at my very flat a vastly superior plan (Full Fibre 100, 150/30 Mb/s, with a landline – call charges extra) for only a couple of quid more (£ 36) per month. I tried requesting for an upgrade, but BT maintained that the plan I was on was the best they could offer me – switching to Full Fibre 100 with a landline would require me to pony up £ 50 a month. Since I'm well within my cooling-off period, I've decided to ditch them and go with a different provider.

My choices are:
1. TalkTalk, who are offering me 506 Mb/s for £ 35 a month, with no changes to RRP once the 18-month contract ends
2. Sky, who are offering me 145 Mb/s for £ 35 a month, with the possiblity of price increases during the 18-month contract period
3. Zen, who are offering me 100 Mb/s for £ 39 a month, with no changes to RRP once the 18-month contract ends

I'm extremely tempted to go with TalkTalk, but everywhere on the Interwebs, I read about absolute horror stories about people getting only a fraction of the promised speed, terrible customer service, long delays with respect to repairs, engineers playing truant and TalkTalk hitting aggrieved customers with fines. I tried asking people in my office and on the Facebook group for my development, and no one seems to have been on TalkTalk for ages (could actually be a good thing with respect to contention ratios) and they have a generally bad opinion about the company. I'd like to add that I'm a site-reliability engineer in the city, so being connected at all times is absolutely necessary for me – it literally brings food to the table.

So, I ask you a question that's probably been beaten to death: what do you guys think? Is a TalkTalk connection worth the hassle in 2021?

Cheers, and I hope you have a smashing Bank holiday weekend.

Edited by Sarmat (Sat 28-Aug-21 05:42:34)

I cannot answer any of your FTTP questions but i have been with TT for over 10 years and have had little problems in all that time, i am on the Fibre 65 (FTTC) package which is capped at 80Mbps and always get the speeds below.

Don't believe everything you read about customer service they are not as bad as many make out and have improved over the years, i haven't had much need to contact them but when i have i prefer the community forum if not urgent (its not 24/7 support) and online chat if urgent as i find it easier than trying to talk to someone in a foreign county with my Cumbrian accent as it saves them saying "Could you say that again" every couple of minutes.

A few years ago we lost connection in the school holidays i posted on the community forum asking if anyone else in the area was having problems a few customers posted that they were and in a matter of hours they had an engineer at the exchange they kept us informed on the forum and it was soon sorted, the problem with forums is members are quick to slate their ISP's when things go wrong but seldom post a thread thanking the ISP for sorting problems out fast so you get a very biased view if you read lots of forums.

Hi,
I had TalkTalk ADSL from 2013 to 2018, only ever had 3 major outages, quoted speeds of 11Mbps down were always bang on same for the 1.2Mbps up.

Only ever had issue that required and engineer and talktalk arranged a next day appointment at 6PM and openreach came at 8AM and solved the issue in less than 10 mins, obviously you knew it would be water ingress so a resplice and tug was good enough.

Can't speak for FTTP but i know others that have told me they have their FTTC product and they tell me what's quoted is what they get. They tell me
they only ever had one issue with a router, well after a router swap they realised they had a network card causing the router to die. So they are happy.

Personally my advice generally with them is use the forum as they will answer quicker than if you call, the guy i'm on about got instant message speed in the forum so they are quicker than calling.


I know if I were you, I would do it as if you compare the speed to price ratio, even if you only get 400Mbps say your still getting more than with Sky or Zen and you also get a mesh WiFi system included with the price.
Personally I know I'll be joining talktalk FTTP if the prices are still competitive when FTTP is installed to my street in september 2022.

I would appreciate it though when you do get it if you could run some speed tests other ethernet just to get an idea of how they hold out.

I've had Talktalk 500mb fttp for about 4 months now. It's been absolutely solid. Before that I was with them for fttc for 6 years, and no problems there either.

I will say the ordering process for fttp was not great, having to phone up and spend a while placing the order that way. Only to have them mess my first order up.
The fttp team are UK based though, and seem pretty good (the first order being put through wrong aside).

Since moving to fttp, it tests above 450mb/s pretty consistently, pings are low and stable too. Overall, zero complaints for me, and the price is unbeatable for openreach based fttp.

I'm on Talktalks 550/75 FTTP package.
I get 500/70 pretty much round the clock.

Single thread is only about 200Mb/s most of the time but for a contended residential service that's good enough for me.
I think a lot of people expect too much expecting to hit the headline rate on single threaded downloads 24/7.

The ordering process isn't the best. It needs ordered on the phone. They then take a couple days to perform a credit check before submitting your order to OpenReach.

Even if you have an existing FTTP service (or a provisioned ONT) Talktalk try give you a date for an FTTP install appointment.
The system eventually picks up that you have an active ONT and no engineer appointment is booked, but Talktalk don't pass this on to the customer.
I expect a lot of customers who are migrating FTTP to Talktalk are sitting around on migration day waiting for an engineer that will never come.

There's no PPP as with their FTTC (VDSL2/G.Fast) products.
It's IPoE/DHCP.

I would note that last time I looked you won't get a 'landline' with TalkTalk residential FTTP, you will need to go with a VOIP provider.

I placed my new order on Friday, insisting that it's a new install (no transferral / cease of my FTTC connection), and they seem to have messed that up because I got a notification from my current provider tonight that they're sad to see me go.

(I need to have both running for a short while so that I can transfer my landline to a VOIP provider).

How were they at sorting out your messed up order?

In reply to a post by MilesR:

I placed my new order on Friday, insisting that it's a new install (no transferral / cease of my FTTC connection), and they seem to have messed that up because I got a notification from my current provider tonight that they're sad to see me go.

(I need to have both running for a short while so that I can transfer my landline to a VOIP provider).

How were they at sorting out your messed up order?

I was originally a TT residential customer, they would not add FTTP as a new install, but if you are with another provider then that must be some sort of problem with OR I guess. Whatever it sounds like you need to either cancel your order, or port your number to a Viop provider ASAP or your number will 'disappear' with little hope of ever getting it back.

Thanks. Have spoken to my current provider; and they have put a stop to the cancellation of services. However, that has likely cancelled the provision of the new FTTP install...can't yet get through to TalkTalk to sort that out 🤦🏻‍♂️

Edit:
For anyone else who might get the same.
TalkTalk used to place their orders manually with OpenReach, but they are now automated. Because of the automation it's triggering the "migration". They were very helpful and said they would redo the order manually to request a new provision of service instead. So hopefully all sorted.

So far my customer service experience with TalkTalk is a positive one.

Edited by MilesR (Tue 07-Sep-21 11:15:09)

For anyone else stumbling on this thread.

I had it installed last week (7th Oct 2021). So far so good.

Speeds are as advertised - though please note I'm using my own equipment (non-Wifi router + dedicated Wireless Access Points).
NOTE: The connection (via OpenReach) is DHCP / IPoE, so no username etc. is required.

TalkTalk are a little slow at setting up my account etc. because at the moment it's mostly manual.
However, the service itself is great so far.