Talk Talk Bandwidth/Superfast Broadband

strangeotron

Talk Talk are crap. Our speed with them is 6mps - nowhere near the "up to" 20 they initially promised. No surprises.

One of their sales people cornered me in town and after I explained their service was crap, they said that, if we paid (iirc) £27 extra a month we could get a greater speed because we have access to 'super fast broadband' locally.

Apparently.

My question is: why do we have to pay extra for a service that isn't total crap? There's no infrastructure costs involved, the network is there - I asked. So this smells like a scam.

onomatopoeia99

6 is up to 20. That's how xDSL broadband works and has done for about 15 years.

It's physics, not a personal vendetta.

Sounds like you have ADSL and VDSL is available.

forgotmyname

I was lucky to get 4MB. Just a very long cable from the exchange.

Luckily it was only 14 or 15 years to wait for fibre and the little box is virtually at the end of the garden. 73MB with Plusnet, a little slower with Vodafone though. Even though they said it should be faster..

strangeotron

"up to" is the obvious scam, we all know it is so let's not be disingenuous in defending !!!! poor consumer service on a consumer rights website.

I was told that no extra hardware or infrastructure was required, but they want to charge almost thirty quid more a month in order to get anything approaching an acceptable speed. So they are providing nothing (other than to stop throttling their connection) in return for the money. THat is what I do not understand

AndyPK

If you joined recently they should have given you speed range at signup.

Cornucopia

strangeotron wrote: »

"up to" is the obvious scam, we all know it is so let's not be disingenuous in defending !!!! poor consumer service on a consumer rights website.

That is how the industry works. Have you used a speed check site to see where your present speed fits in terms of what is available?

https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/postcode_checker/results/?postcode=

To clarify what it means: the TYPE of service (ADSL) has a maximum speed of 20Mbps. What you, personally, see of that depends on a variety of factors, most of which are fixed, and some of which are outside TT's control.

I was told that no extra hardware or infrastructure was required, but they want to charge almost thirty quid more a month in order to get anything approaching an acceptable speed. So they are providing nothing (other than to stop throttling their connection) in return for the money. THat is what I do not understand

No, you have misunderstood, or it has not been properly explained to you.

The service you are being offered is (probably) TT's Fibre Broadband - they call this "Super Fast BB", which is not a very informative name. This costs £27 all-in per month, and will probably involve a new Router, and an Engineer visit (at least to the cabinet in the street, and possibly to your home). It involves mostly completely different infrastructure. If you want to learn more, look up "FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet)".

Mister_G

As I understand it from someone who works for BT Openreach, the typical cost of installing a FTTC cabinet, fibre and ducting from the exchange, and the equipment at the exchange is in the region of £50k to £100k, depending on distance and also ducting requirements.

A FTTC cabinet can serve up to 288 subscribers, so typically there is a cost of up to £350 per subscriber to supply FTTC (VDSL).

AndyPK

And opereach get ~£8 of the line rental £100 a year

I almost feel sorry for them.

Do open reach get money from the fibre BB ?

strangeotron

I've no idea what the service offered was. But I was assured that there would be no extra hardware or infrastructure required.

Either way it doesn't matter. I had and have no intention of paying an extra thirty quid a month to go online. If i had that money to spare TT would be the last company that would get it given their reckless disregard for customer privacy and their shoddy service.

[Deleted User]

strangeotron wrote: »

"up to" is the obvious scam, we all know it is so let's not be disingenuous in defending !!!! poor consumer service on a consumer rights website.

I was told that no extra hardware or infrastructure was required, but they want to charge almost thirty quid more a month in order to get anything approaching an acceptable speed. So they are providing nothing (other than to stop throttling their connection) in return for the money. THat is what I do not understand

It's still not a 'scam' no matter how often you repeat it and stating a fact isn't defending anyone (and that's not 'poor customer service' either). This site isn't here just to go 'there, there' and make you feel better. You're obviously on ADSL towards the end of the line or in a heavily populated area. They've advised you that you can upgrade to fibre to get a better speed, if you don't want to pay that then go elsewhere. If you get ADSL with someone else then you're going to get exactly the same speed though.

I have ADSL and have got 18Mbps for (literally) years but I'm only around 550 meters from the exchange (in a straight line) with relatively few subscribers.

And they're not 'throttling' your broadband as the fibre is entirely different.

Cornucopia

It's not "30 quid extra", either.

It is £27pm total (including line rental) with TT, currently £25 with Plusnet and also with Vodafone (no landline).

It's likely that you are already paying £18-24 per month for your existing poor service, in which case the upgrade to Fibre will cost £7-£3 extra (possibly less with haggling - I pay £25 pm in total with TT).

The "Superfast BB" service is "upto" 38Mpbs. I got a speed guarantee of 30Mbps when I last reviewed my TT contract, and they achieve 34-36Mbps in practice.

I appreciate what you've been told, but that person was wrong, or you misunderstood what they told you. It happens. Time to move on.