TalkTalk Reputation/Worries

Hi,

I live in an area that has limited broadband options (Crossgar exchange, NI), and TalkTalk are the only LLU provider available to me. I am thinking of switching to them thanks to the offer from moneysavingsexpert.com this week. I am currently with O2 and get around 2.5Mb speeds.

I am just a bit worried about TalkTalk's rep. For one thing, should I expect to get the same speed as i do currently? Their estimate says between 1.5Mb and 2.9Mb, i guess even the lower end of that would be good considering the cost savings - I am currently paying around £35 a month on line rental and BB whereas the new deal would be less than half that.

But is there a compelling reason to NOT switch to TalkTalk BB these days? Can i expect exactly the same speeds as currently?

Thanks
PS
I should add that my main uses are that I have a Netflix account so would like to be able to get movies from that, I also perform large multi-gig downloads to my PS3 quite often. Reliability is also important since I WFH 2 days a week.

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-Mar-13 12:07:12)

Post your current router stats.

What's wrong with BTw WBC ADSL2+, say from Plusnet?

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Post your current router stats.

What's wrong with BTw WBC ADSL2+, say from Plusnet?

I'm sorry, none of this makes any sense

I'm not having any specific technical problems with O2 at all, I just wanted to be sure that I won't suffer a massive drop in performance if I switch to Talk Talk. Also I literally only just received an email from O2 saying they have sold to Sky - I wonder will that have any impact?

You'll be fine on TalkTalk as long as you're not a heavy P2P downloader and are happy to use the forums for support. Their poor reputation is purely to do with their phone support, everything else is spot on with TT.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

You'll be fine on TalkTalk as long as you're not a heavy P2P downloader and are happy to use the forums for support. Their poor reputation is purely to do with their phone support, everything else is spot on with TT.

Actually TT phone support seems to be improving: my cousin reported a downstream throughput slow down on his LLU line, within a few hours he got a message saying that a line fault had been found and within a couple of weeks an OR engineer came out to check his line. During the visit the engineer fitted a NTE5, since my cousin didn't have one, and this plus the line checks were done for free. Now, with the addition of a NTE5, we are doing some improvements to the home wiring and hopefully the downstream sync speed will be fully optimised

Edit: BTW TT also sent him a new router, but these days they seem to want the old one back...

Edited by 4M2 (Fri 01-Mar-13 15:03:22)

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

You'll be fine on TalkTalk as long as you're not a heavy P2P downloader...

I do a bit of P2P, perhaps an average of 1Gb per week. Why is that a problem with TT? Keep in mind that I'm only getting 300-350kb/sec max currently anyway with my connection.

In reply to a post by kaesarsosei:

Keep in mind that I'm only getting 300-350kb/sec max currently anyway with my connection.

As XRaySpeX suggested post your router stats. This may help http://www.kitz.co.uk/routers/routerstats.htm

In reply to a post by kaesarsosei:

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

You'll be fine on TalkTalk as long as you're not a heavy P2P downloader...

I do a bit of P2P, perhaps an average of 1Gb per week. Why is that a problem with TT? Keep in mind that I'm only getting 300-350kb/sec max currently anyway with my connection.

Then you'll probably be ok on TT. TT throttle P2P traffic dynamically ie depends on how busy your exchange is at that time. You could of course use a VPN which bypasses the throtlling but given your current speeds i imagine there wouldn't be a huge difference between throttled and unthrottled speeds on your line. Go for it!