UK ISP TalkTalk Confirms Removal of Peak Time Traffic Management
Internet and phone provider TalkTalk has confirmed that its Plus and entry-level Essentials fixed line broadband products will no longer apply Traffic Management during peak times, which effectively makes the products “totally unlimited” instead of merely “unlimited“. Yes there’s a difference.
TalkTalk has advised ISPreview.co.uk that the change, which was initially spotted by Thinkbroadband, actually occurred on 13th May 2013 but for some reason the provider chose not to shout from the rooftops about it. Perhaps because most people understandably tend to assume that “unlimited” already means “totally unlimited“, even if it doesn’t in the eyes of some providers.
A Spokesperson for TalkTalk told ISPreview.co.uk:
“Last year we scrapped download limits on Essentials and as of the 13th of May have made our network totally unlimited by removing the limited traffic management policy that we had in place. This means that our customers will never be slowed down, even at peak times, and is part of our ongoing investment in our network. TalkTalk customers can now enjoy the UK’s best value totally unlimited broadband.”
Good news then, although it should still be said that customers could still be slowed down by other factors like natural network congestion or problems with home wiring etc. In fact a number of things can slow down your connection and many of those are often outside of your ISPs control.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Lets just hope they have bought the capacity they need then, as the bottleneck will still be there and at peak times people will still slow down, probably even more so without traffic management on the heavy users?
Totally agree Chris. As a Metaphor, if the national speed limit was removed from the M25, it would still be heavily congested to go slow or stop at certain times of the day.
Those of use with accounts acquired by TalkTalk never have much of an idea of where we stand on such matters. The company has a habit of changing things – like FTP access – without considering the implications foe “legacy” accounts like ours.
I have never know if Traffic Management applied to my Pipex account. As I am paying well over the cost of the juicy cheap introductory offers on offer, I hope not. But who knows? I never hear from Talk Talk. They just take my money.