In reply to a post by ian72:

Andrew has published last months speed test stats on the main site.

It may be down to technology or customer base but it is telling how much lower the talktalk performance stats are compared to the ones above them (also surprising how much higher BTs are). There would need to be a lot of analysis done behind the scenes to find the root cause but it does appear on the face of it that talktalk is probably more contended/lower performing than most of the ISPs.

I still don't trust a service that is that cheap - it doesn't sit right with me that they can make enough money to put the level of service into it that I want. I am not saying that more expensive ISPs are automatically better but to do things so cheaply corners must be being cut (it cannot in my opinion be entirely down to amazing efficiency).

There are very simple reasons why BtW based ISPs rank higher than talktalk for speeds:

1) TalkTalk's default SNR is 12db whereas BtW is 6 or 9db (can't remember which) and as many people will just leave the SNR as it is that automatically gives BTw based ISPs better speeds.

2) For those on short/stable lines, 21CN based BtW service can lower the SNR to 3db whereas TalkTalk cannot go lower than 6db...again another factor in favour of Btw isps (though obviously you could use a router siuch as Billionj 7800N to lower the SNR)

Like i said i used to be a broadband 'snob' prior to joining TT but IMHO their network performance is excellent and on a par with other decent isps. The reason why TTR are cheap is because of their overseas support...its simple economics. If the OP requires top class support on a par with the likes of Zen, IDnet Goscomb, AAISP etc then he/she should consider TalkTalk Business.

Hmm, just looked at TalkTalk prices and it appears for FTTC and phone they actually aren't that much different to PlusNet. On a like for like service (or as close as you can get to that) then the costs are probably actually pretty much the same. It is the headline costs that I normally see of incredibly low price ADSL but that doesn't appear to really carry over into the FTTC world.

As far as noise targets are concerned I thought FTTC was the same provision across the board - can the ISP choose a different SNR as standard?

If you are truly going to an up to 8Mb connection you will probably not connect onto the 21CN network and will be on the old 20CN ADSL1 system. I have friends who are on that with Talk Talk and at evenings its unusable, whereas I get full speed from a different ISP both on same exchange, so its not exchange congestion. 20CN is old and expensive for the ISP's to buy bandwidth, and Talk Talk will I suspect be putting all its 20CN users over limited bandwidth.

To add some more information

For ADSL/ADSL2+ (Mean figures for December 2014)

BT 6.2 Mbps
PlusNet 6.7 Mbps
Sky 6.9 Mbps
TalkTalk 6.6 Mbps

The overall figures include the mix of technologies and the blog showed how different the proportions of FTTC are within the various providers.

In reply to a post by ian72:

As far as noise targets are concerned I thought FTTC was the same provision across the board - can the ISP choose a different SNR as standard?

Correct, SNR is standard across the board for FTTC products however i would have thought there are more customers on ADSL(2+) for all ISPs therefore SNR margins of those customers would play a major part in the speed results.

In reply to a post by gregormac:

If you are truly going to an up to 8Mb connection you will probably not connect onto the 21CN network and will be on the old 20CN ADSL1 system. I have friends who are on that with Talk Talk and at evenings its unusable, whereas I get full speed from a different ISP both on same exchange, so its not exchange congestion. 20CN is old and expensive for the ISP's to buy bandwidth, and Talk Talk will I suspect be putting all its 20CN users over limited bandwidth.

TalkTalk do not use BT's 21CN network, they have their own LLU ADSL2+ equipment in many exchanges. As for slow speeds on TalkTalk using the BT 20CN network, thats hardly news. Same applies to Sky Connect and O2 Access (RIP).

We still don't know if he is looking at TalkTalk LLU or the BT Wholesale based product. I don't think they now offer the latter to new customers but may be mistaken.

Nor do we know he has actually checked TalkTalk availability or is just looking at their website.

Can't say much bad about talktalk

had a 2nd line with them for 3yrs ish and everything worked good

I had 1 fault but contacted them on their forums and it was sorted out quickly.

We've been on Talk Talk Simply Broadband (LLU) since September - when we were put on a Talk Talk line after a mix-up. The speed of our connection (5 Meg) and up-time has been the same as when I was with Vivaciti on LLU.

We've had the odd disconnection for around 20 seconds at a time but I know from my router stats that this has mainly been when the SNR's fallen too low. I started off on a 9db SNR (resulting in a Meg slower speed) but was able to change to a 6db one after a request on the Talk Talk Community forum.

I just wish I could get Talk Talk fibre - my cabinet's been live since September. I do live in a smallish village, though (population 4-5,000).

Edited by paul_liverpoolfc (Thu 08-Jan-15 19:07:52)