Talk Talk Business

Thought I'd share my experiences with everyone since moving to Talk Talk Business

Previously, I had been with Freedom2Surf, which was taken over by Pipex, then Opal, and then Talk Talk Business

I stayed on my original F2S package until Talk Talk LLU'd my exchange in March, when I moved to Broadband, Line Rental and W & E calls for just under £30 per month

At the start, I left my connection at the profile that Talk Talk had set at the time which gave me a sync to the exchange of about 16meg

Once I was confident that the connection was stable, I rang Talk Talk Business and asked to be put on to the highest profile, which the very friendly person kindly did with no questions asked - this upped my sync to 20meg

Recently, I dug out my old Netgear DG834G router and flashed it with the DG Team firmware, so that I could manually set the SNR percentage
Starting conservatively, I moved the slider down a little bit at a time over a week getting better and better sync rates to the exchange
I have now set the slider all the way to 1% and now have a sync rate of 23717kbps
This new sync rate has dropped the noise margin down to 0.6 and has as of today has remained stable for 1166 hours, with not one drop in connection

This now gives me the following stats from the router:-
Downstream Connection Speed = 23717kbps
Downstream Line Attenuation = 17.0db
Downstream Noise Margin = 0.6db
Upstream Connection Speed = 1020kbps
Upstream Line Attenuation = 6.5db
Upstream Noise Margin = 14.9db

Overall, I have been very pleased with the whole service from Talk Talk Business, and on the couple of times I had rang the tech support, they have been very pleasant and very helpful, and have dealt with my query immediately - plus it's an 0800 number

One of the things which drew me to Talk Talk Business was the 'Priority Traffic', which means that my service takes preference over Talk Talk residential lines, meaning that at busy times in the evening, my speeds never drop from what they are at any other time of the day (speed tests are always nearly 21meg - with downloads about 2.5MB/s)

Are there any downsides?
Yes a few, but they are not major ones

1. The service is covered by their FUP, which states the maximum per month usage is 100GB - this is fine for me as I never get near that, but they do not have anyway for me to view what my current usage is, so if I was getting close to the 100GB, I would never know until I got charged for any extra I may use

2. 24 month contract - this did concern me at the start in case the service turned out to be terrible, but so far I am very pleased, and as I live in a rural area, the chances of my exchange getting fibre or any other faster service in the next 2 years is nigh on impossible

3. Their web site for looking at my account and online billing is a bit slow, but not slow enough to be annoying

4. I have my own answerphone at home, but Talk Talk Business have activated their own answerphone service which I have to ring 1571 to pick up the messages - I will give them a ring about this to see if it can be turned off

5. When I call anyone from my phone, the person I'm calling cannot view my phone number, and get a 'number withheld' message instead - again I may ring them to see if anything can be done about this

So all in all, I am very pleased with my service from Talk Talk Business, and would recommend them to my friends
One of them had already moved, and is also getting a great service

Yes, that Netgear router is insanely good at holding a connection even at stupidly low SNR's

BTW you did not have to flash DGTeam firmware to control the SNR.

There is a program called DMT for that router and it allows you to also set the SNR.

Did did try that first, but the SNR would go back to its original setting if the router was rebooted, but the DG Team firmware has also given me port redirection and a wake on LAN feature, which is not in the original firmware

Previously I had used a Draytek router for these features, but when I moved to LLU, the Draytek would always sync at 4 meg lower than the Netgear

Forgot to mention in my first post that I also installed an ADSL Nation filtered faceplate, and this has helped a great deal too

Edited by deleted (Sat 06-Oct-12 17:58:33)

My DG834 Connects at about 20mb with no snr tweak. I can get 24575 with tweaking the SNR


Im using a DGN1000 atm and this connected at 23414 or there abouts and the SNR can not be tweaked

You must be pretty close to your exchange with a line attenuation of 11.2db

I'm about 400m away from mine as the crow flies

I liked the features on my Draytek, but the sync to the exchange was really poor compared to the Netgear

That I am, Im 227 meters as the crow flies.

Acutal Line length is about 750-800 Meters