Switching from Virgin M100 to 67M Talk Talk alternative

armour999

Hi all,

Virgin was charging me £34/month for 100M BB, standard Tivo box and free weekend calls but now wants to charge me £47/month for the same package.

I never use the phone, rarely use the Tivo box but want to hang on to fast BB.

It seems that the best (non-Virgin) speed I can get in my area (London SE25) is 67M and TalkTalk does this speed for an effective £20.45.

My two questions are:

1) Will I notice the diminished speed? I regularly stream movies (ethernet to TV) and run 2 wireless devices at the same time. I'm not particularly techie but I have just done a BB speedcheck (with an ethernet cable straight out of the back of the router - 108M without the telly on, 98M while streaming a film. Wirelessly, sitting about two yards from the router, I got 49M

2) Can anyone give any recent feedback on the standard of TalkTalks customer service?

Thanks for reading,

Chris.

JJ_Egan

That will be UP TO 67 .depending upon distance from cabinet and quality of phone line .

littleboo

t sounds as if 67 Mbps will be more than enough, but, is that the speed given for your line, or the average speed that ISP's have to quote (despite it being meaningless) ?. How many people in the household? You may find their lower tier package sufficient.
TalkTalk have a pretty poor reputation on the whole, although there are plenty of very satisfied customers.

armour999

Thanks for the replies.

JJ, the speed is quoted as AVERAGE between 8-10pm. I am about 20 yards from the green cabinet in the street and got 108M connected directly to the router this afternoon. Not sure what the quality of the phone line has to do with things, as far as I know it's OK, I've only ever used the phone to call Virgin when there was a problem. I'm pretty sure that the BB comes into the house on a different (co-axial) cable.

Littleboo, Speed is quoted as average and I live in a 2 person household. Could you give a link to a site giving feedback from TT customers please?

Given that I currently get (slightly over) 100M currently on a 100M package, would it be a reasonable assumption that I should get 67M under the new contract?

Thanks, Chris.

bill888

TalkTalk uses Openreach network. ie. they do not use the same green cabinet as Virgin.  TalkTalk may charge £60  for installing a 'new line'.  This is to pay Openreach to reactive or install new BT line and a new modern BT master phone socket in your property.    
https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Articles/About-your-new-line-installation/ta-p/2204654

Only BT and Vodafone offer free new line installation. Sky & NOW charge a lower fee.

Enter your house number and post code to get an estimate for VDSL2 superfast fibre speeds
https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/Address

Have you spoken to Virgin?  If you phone and tell them you don't want phone and TV but wish to keep 100mb broaband, they will probably offer the usual £32 pm.

In  our experience (prior to lockdown), if you tell Virgin you are cancelling all services and giving 30 days notice.   Their Outbounds team 'may' phone you within a week to offer a better deal on 100mb broadband only.   < £25 pm.

If you place an order with another ISP and choose to port your telephone number, Virgin's Outbounds team will be notified of your intent to leave, and should try and contact you by phone to persuade you to stay with an offer.  eg. <£25 pm for 100mb fibre only.

Customers cannot contact Outbounds team to get best retention deals.

The 36mb superfast fibre service may be all you need.  

Highland76

bill888 said:

TalkTalk uses Openreach network. ie. they do not use the same green cabinet as Virgin.  TalkTalk will charge £60 for installing a 'new line'.  This is to pay Openreach to reactive or install new BT line and a new modern BT master phone socket in your property.    
https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Articles/About-your-new-line-installation/ta-p/2204654

That's outdated info as TalkTalk no longer charge for new lines. I just went through a FTTC dummy order on TalkTalk's website (don't have copper) and there was no charge to have a new line installed. I suspect TT simply absorb the Openreach new line installation charge themselves given they tie the customer into a 12-24 month contract.

The_Fat_Controller

As said above, you need to get a specific estimate for your address and completely ignore the average 67 Mbps for ANY provider that uses a crappy old phone line.
I am on the "36" average service but get 33 download which is actually bang on for the length of my line to the fibre cabinet.
There is very little loss over distance on "real" fibre but that is not the case for copper, or God forbid, aluminium phone lines.

JJ_Egan

armour999 said:

Thanks for the replies.

JJ, the speed is quoted as AVERAGE between 8-10pm. I am about 20 yards from the green cabinet in the street and got 108M connected directly to the router this afternoon. Not sure what the quality of the phone line has to do with things, as far as I know it's OK, I've only ever used the phone to call Virgin when there was a problem. I'm pretty sure that the BB comes into the house on a different (co-axial) cable.

As said  that's with Virgin infrastructure ,Only VM use that .

TT use Open Reach fibre to the cabinet and old BT phone line to house .

PS dont forget if you do move to sort out porting your number .