TalkTalk UK ISP Trial Reveals New Router for Forthcoming YouView TV Service

Broadband provider TalkTalk UK appears to have revealed the first picture of its next generation ‘Plus‘ package router (Huawei HG533), which is specifically said to include support for their forthcoming YouView (IPTV) based TalkTalkTV service (due to launch sometime during “summer 2012“).

The highly polished router, which also supports the providers latest superfast “Fibre Optic” broadband (FTTC) packages, quietly showed up a few days ago as part of a new customer trial. It is almost certain to represent the first look at what will eventually ship to customers when the ISPs new TV service goes live (not including the IPTV set-top-box of course, which we’ve yet to see). Sadly it is not compatible with the old TV (Tiscali TV / HomeChoice) service, which stopped being sold several years ago.

The router itself features a new branded design that looks a little bit like one of those black iPod speaker docks and is said to have been created by “taking on suggestions from the previous Huawei HG532 and D-Link DSL-2780 trials“. Aside from the cosmetics, it looks much like any other router with 4 Ethernet / LAN ports at the back. But there are some other highlights.

TalkTalks Huawei HG533 Feature Highlights

• Full N Spec WiFi (long guard interval by default so maximum of 270Mbps, short guard interval can be configured to give 300Mbps)
• UPnP turned on by default
• Auto wireless channel selection turned on by default
• DLNA (not turned on by default at this stage)
• SMB server
• USB port for storage and printing
• Dedicated Fibre port for Fibre Optic speeds of 40/2 or 80/20
• Auto sensing logic to identify which connection method the customer has (customers do not need to make the switch manually)
• YouView Support
• Power Saving

The Dedicated Fibre port looks like the same sort of WAN / Ethernet interface that you would expect to find on the back of most routers but we could be wrong. Readers hoping to find out more about the HG533 should take note that Huawei has created a number of different models for operators in other countries, which often feature significant changes (i.e. it’s hard to get an accurate spec for TalkTalks model).

It’s also interesting to note that this is the first TalkTalk router to reference support for YouView and yet it is intended to ship alongside their top-end ‘Plus‘ broadband package (unlimited downloads). This suggests, perhaps understandably, that their TV service might not be available alongside the cheaper ‘Essentials‘ package with its 40GB allowance.

In separate news TalkTalk reveals that it saw a “record spike in traffic“, which apparently equates to a 7% increase, during the recent end-of-season Barclays Premier League match between Manchester City and Manchester United. TalkTalk said that its network handles 250Gb of general IP traffic every second (average), rising to 460Gb at peak times. By kick-off on Monday they saw a spike with an extra 30Gb per second.