Any broadband experts around?

Serendipitous Sid

Serendipitous Sid

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We're trying to reduce the cost of our landline and broadband, and I need to check if the smooth-talking sod at TalkTalk to whom I've just been speaking is right about something ...

We're on FTTC here, and with our existing BT package we're getting a consistent 27Mbs download speed. All we actually use t'internets for nowadays is checking out the web, watching streaming videos on YouTube, BBC News site and such (not in HD), downloading music and listening to internet radio. Never more than two of us online at once, and that only rarely for an hour or so at a time.

TalkTalk Man reckons we don't actually need anything like 27Mbs for that (I'm fairly sure he said we'd only rarely be going over 5Mbs!). Allegedly we wouldn't notice any loss of anything if we went with their bargain-basement package listed as giving "up to 17MBs", which I understood to be an ADSL package.

Is he trying too hard to get his commission, or might he well be right?
 
He's right in one respect, if you do get a true or near 17Mbs you should be fine for streaming video but it's the upload you may have issues with. If you video skype you may find the upload speed limiting.
 
I wouldn't go with talk talk or plusnet after witnessing there service with my mother in law, and father.

I would only ever consider virgin or BT.
 
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Jonothan, I seem to recall him saying that realistically we could expect to get 5.9Mbs.

Robert, I hear what you say, but I'm looking at a potential saving of around £300 p.a. which to me nowadays is a lot of money, and we only have very limited requirements indeed. We're no longer business users.
 
Talk talk have a very bad habit of doing a lot of talk talk that has no relation to reality and two words spring to mind barge & pole
 
If you have fibre to the cab then you should be able to currently receive some decent upload and download speeds. Over the next years more and more media is going to be delivered via remote cloud hosting over the internet as well as skype etc that the guys above have mentioned.

You need to factor in contention ratios. So if a few people on your street are uploading/downloading at the same time then they can 'contend' for that bandwidth. It often means you may reach 10Mbit at 11AM, but 0.1Mb at 7PM on particularly crap ADSL. TalkTalk are apparently quite bad for that.

I'd suggest to stay with a decent BT Infinity/Virgin circuit if the budget can allow. TalkTalk may advertise 17Mbit, but it's best case scenario if he or she has measured the distance from your house to the exchange. Typically it's not going to reach that.
 
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Keith W said:
Talk talk have a very bad habit of doing a lot of talk talk that has no relation to reality and two words spring to mind barge & pole
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Problem is, Keith, people say the same about BT, with whom I've had a couple of major issues in the past ...
 
@Cobra will be along shortly vis a vis Talk Talk I suspect :)
 
BT may be a pain due to the size of their operations, But at least their core product is decent.
If you're just surfing the net and reading a few emails, then you should be fine. If you want to stream Netflix, Sky, BTSports, Youtube HD over a Talk Talk ADSL circuit. Then there may be times when you have issues.
Serendipitous Sid said:
Problem is, Keith, people say the same about BT, with whom I've had a couple of major issues in the past ...
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viv1969 said:
@Cobra will be along shortly vis a vis Talk Talk I suspect :)
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I'm here to sing their praises :wave:
:D


Tis your call, obviously but I've had all sorts of issues with them since they took over tesco.net.
They even sent me a new router telling me this would sort the problem but that was faulty and they refused to supply another one.

They eventually stopped communicating with me. And as soon as BT get off their arse and get fibre to here, I'm switching.
I have a whole thread running about it, but basically their service ( BB) I get anywhere between 0.3 Mbs up and down, yes that's right!
to 3Mbs down and 1 up, it varies between the two day to day and times to times, and not just at peak periods, early hours of the morning see's it fluctuation wildly too.
 
If you do join talk talk be careful on what you take, I believe the bb might be a 12 month contract but you view which they try and get you to sign up to for free is 18 months.

I am with them at present and their speed is very slow (non ft) looking at moving to virgin when the contract finishes.
 
£25 per month seems a massive difference between ADSL & FTTC - when I upgraded from ADSL to FTTC a couple of years ago it was just a £10 per month "add on" with an option to pay £15 more for 20mb up/80mb down instead of the basic 10/40 service. Perhaps you are already on the 20/80 service and could save by dropping to 10/40 if your line only supports 27mb?
 
Yeah BT for me (Fibre and Home Hub 5) has been a nightmare. Never had some many drop out issues. If Virgin was an option for me I'd be there.
 
Serendipitous Sid said:
Problem is, Keith, people say the same about BT, with whom I've had a couple of major issues in the past ...
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You asked specifically about talk talk though, hence my reply

For sure if you searched you could find horror stories about all the broadband providers, even I could share a horror story about BT

However talk talk are the crème de la crème of the cr@P pile
 
Had TalkTalk for years but then went to Virgin 120MB package for a specific high use requirement in business ... once I had retirement in sight I dropped Virgin to go back to TalkTalk and save myself a bundle of money. I've never had a major problem with Talk Talk and it just works for me ... I get around 8MB download and .8MB upload and it's enough for all of my needs, I just have to wait a little longer for things than when I had 120MB ... do I care?
You rarely hear much good reporting about a company, only complaints ... I can only report my own findings over many years of dealing with them :)
 
Serendipitous Sid said:
but I'm looking at a potential saving of around £300 p.a
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Not sure what you are currently on, but BT are offering Infinity 1 - 38mb and 40gb usage for £10 month on 12 month contract (plus line rental)...I'd speak with BT as the chances are they will beat this slightly for you as an existing customer...

Few options here http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband-packages

We're with BT and generally it's been fine, unfortunately, we don't have Virgin round here...
 
All depends on where you are and whether there is a cable to you. Rural users beware! I also would never touch Talk Talk ever again.

Not saying BT & Virgin are great, they are not, and staying away from the call centre drivel will prevent you having a cardiac.

But independently check out what sort of speeds may be attainable in your area, rather than listening to commission led salespeople, who would sell their elderly relatives to get you to sign up.
 
We changed over from BT to Sky about two months ago, from standard broadband to fast, and we are paying £12 per month less.
Our speeds with BT were 1.29MBPS download and .39 MBPS upload, and are now 19.8 MBPS download and 3.25 MBPS upload.
BT call centres are rubbish and never listen, and Sky (despite the fact I hate Murdoch) are very efficient - so far.
 
Apart from virgin most other providers go through Openreach so in theory any supplier should be able to provide the same speeds etc on equivalent packages. There are a lot of good deals out there at the moment but be careful, i think i saw BT's or Sky's and i think it was a free years worth of BB (FTTC) and they had usage limits of 25gb which is not a lot especially if you are streaming as well.

It will be down to your opinion of the provider and price. Have you talked to your existing provider and if they can match a deal you have seen elsewhere. It seems by the original post that its price orientated. Even if they cant match it exactly, getting close may be enough to keep you to stay and avoid any potential disruption when moving suppliers.
 
I have been with Talk Talk since the AOL days in 1999 and in all that time, I have only had the one day when the connection didn't work and that was a few years ago. Also I get around 11 mbps speeds for 99% of the time (occasionally it drops down to as low as 9 mbps during peak times) and this is via standard copper cable. Included with that are free unlimited landline calls and even calls to mobile phones (ideal for my elderly mother) and of course, the line rental and it all rarely exceeds £37 per month. I don't bother with TV packages as I don't watch that much TV and hate sports anyway (I only have Freeview in the house).

My sister, on the other hand, who lives around the corner from me, decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence and was attracted by the glitter of optic fibre broadband with BT and left Talk Talk for that. That was a few months ago and she's still having issues of one type or another (not getting the promised speeds, changing price plans, rubbish customer helpline, etc).
 
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A drop to a 6MB line should be rather noticeable. It is the max we can get with a top quality modem. It doesn't provide enough headroom for consistent streaming. Catch up TV is a nightmare. I'm now also paying for sky as their system allows downloads first.

In my quest I found that lots better deal were to be had for non adsl services. It is going to be another two years at least until we get fibre. Heck it's only been a few years since I switched from isdn to adsl.

I would shop around regardless. One thing I've found that on standard adsl I get much more consistent results that from other providers who use the same infrastructure. O2 and talk talk were all over the place in there ping responses. Whilst bt is a little dearer it is a lot more stable for us.
 
Thanks folks. Right now it all hinges on what the position is if we switch and the new service is crap i.e. how do we get out of whatever contract we go for, and how complicated can they make that (whoever "they" turn out to be!) ...
 
I was with talk talk for years but working more from home I realised how slow and how frequent connection dropped out. Final straw was a call from their customer services (sales) dept. " dear Mr we would like to save you money so for an extra £5 a month we can offer you a better service was how she started" I have now changed to EE and the difference over talk talk is amazing. No drop outs, faster and customer service is uk based so far so good.
 
Well I've had 6mb for the past 6 years. Only how have we been upgraded to fibre. I had no problem with steaming video from YouTube of Netflix and regular Skype calls to South Africa were faultless. 6mb for normal day to day streaming and web browsing is plenty fast enough.

The only thing that caused me issues was the slow upload speed, and the fact that my 15 year old thinks he has to download the entire internet before he's 21.
 
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ecoleman said:
Well I've had 6mb for the past 6 years. Only how have we been upgraded to fibre. I had no problem with steaming video from YouTube of Netflix and regular Skype calls to South Africa were faultless. 6mb for normal day to day streaming and web browsing is plenty fast enough.

The only thing that caused me issues was the slow upload speed, and the fact that my 15 year old thinks he has to download the entire internet before he's 21.
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In full HD for an average sized family of four? You must have had a very stable 6MB throttled at source opposed to limited by physics.
 
check out their cooling off periods, some start at sign up up some may start at service activation.

if you start having issues and they cant be resolved they will offer you a deadlock option. Wich means you can get out of your contract. This however will not be offered if they are not given suitable time to resolve the issue (down to the company and situation) It will not be offered either if say your estimate was 5mb/s and you can only achieve 4mb/s. The service has to be way out of what was suggested. Even a couple of drops a week will not be classed as needing a deadlock. A deadlock is not offered if your expectations are unrealistic for the technology that you sign up to.
 
My wife used to be with Talk Talk. No complaints at all, but the village switchboard and a lot of phone lines were knocked out by lightning a few years ago, and Talk Talk said they couldn't restore service for some reason. She moved to BT a month later. It's okay, nothing special, and their call centre is painful.

Funny part is BT calling every few weeks and offering her various inducements to upgrade to Infinity. Finally, just out of curiosity, she phoned back and said she would like to go ahead and upgrade. BT replied that it wasn't possible, Infinity isn't available in her area and there are no plans to roll it out...
 
I tink you have 14 days cooling off.

I'm amazed you can save £300 a year. I'm only paying £400 for tv, phone and broadband. Over £200 of that £400 is line rental. I can't see how you can save so much.
 
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ecoleman said:
Well I've had 6mb for the past 6 years. Only how have we been upgraded to fibre. I had no problem with steaming video from YouTube of Netflix and regular Skype calls to South Africa were faultless. 6mb for normal day to day streaming and web browsing is plenty fast enough.

The only thing that caused me issues was the slow upload speed, and the fact that my 15 year old thinks he has to download the entire internet before he's 21.
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dejongj said:
In full HD for an average sized family of four? You must have had a very stable 6MB throttled at source opposed to limited by physics.
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what he said ^.

rjbell said:
I tink you have 14 days cooling off.
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although some will have a longer settle period on the stability of the line.

after that 14 days you're looking at penalty charges for terminating early.
 
Cheers chaps. Gosh, my head's going to implode at this rate ...

I've just now established that according to Openreach, if we go back to copper (from FTTC), we'll actually get up to 4Mbs at this address. Given that most folk in this neighbourhood are on fibre, I don't see the load-sharing aspect of ADSL slowing that 4Mbs down to any significant degree, it's now boiling down to how much we're prepared to pay to stick with the 27Mbs we're currently getting.

And to decide that, it all hinges on one issue. Is 4Mbs enough to avoid buffering on Spotify, internet radio, and standard-def streaming video (YouTube, news sites etc)?

ETA -
rjbell said:
I can't see how you can save so much.
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Straight comparison over cost of line, broadband and the calls we typically make with the offer price on TT's Simply Broadband package and very similar deals from Plusnet and Sky.
 
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dejongj said:
In full HD for an average sized family of four? You must have had a very stable 6MB throttled at source opposed to limited by physics.
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Yes, in full HD from Netflix. Family of 3, but we never had everybody streaming things at the same time.

We also used spotify without any issues.
 
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thing is, what happens when you switch your computer on and microsoft/adobe/apple etc want to pull down 500mb+ of updates? background traffic from smart devices, set top boxes, computers etc. it all adds up and bang thats your 4mb maxed out.
 
neil_g said:
thing is, what happens when you switch your computer on and microsoft/adobe/apple etc want to pull down 500mb+ of updates? background traffic from smart devices, set top boxes, computers etc. it all adds up and bang thats your 4mb maxed out.
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You're going to love this, Neil ...

No smart devices, no TV sets to put boxes on top of, no nothing - just one PC and one laptop, both of which are rarely used at the same time. Also most folk this side of the exchange (never mind the cabinet!) are on fibre. Literally all we need the internets for is email, web surfing, Spotify, internet radio and streaming vid in SD from YouTube, news sites etc.

Despite which, I'm now doubtful about going back to copper ...
 
I'm still gobsmacked that copper would be cheaper than fibre for you. Whenever I look at renewal time I look in envy at those great alternative deals that never are available for me.
 
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