ISP TalkTalk UK Commit £100m to FREE Router Upgrades and Engineer Visits

Budget Internet and phone provider TalkTalk has today announced that it’s investing £100 million into their “on-going network upgrade programme” (TalkTalkatWork), which will be used to deliver an “even faster, safer and more reliable broadband service” by supporting free router upgrades and home engineer (BrightSparks) visits.

The announcement appears to reflect much of what the ISP is already doing rather than the launch of a new initiative. In particular it notes that over 1 million free Router upgrades or replacements have already been delivered and their BrightSparks™ engineers have made 40,000 visits to help improve customer broadband speeds (some of this will have occurred as a result of their Plus TV service launch and optional engineer installation fee).

Separately TalkTalk also notes that the six months half price offer will soon return to their unlimited Plus TV broadband and phone bundle from Monday 19th August 2013, which will cut its price to £7.75 per month for the first six months.

Tristia Harrison, TalkTalks Commercial Director, said:

“We are committed to making our broadband even faster, safer and more reliable. We are really proud of the work we have done so far and of everybody at TalkTalk, who has worked so hard to make big changes to improve our broadband service. We will continue to invest further to make our customers broadband experience even better.”

Elsewhere the press release notes that TalkTalk’s unbundled (LLU) copper ADSL2+ broadband network now covers 95% of the United Kingdom, while 95,000 homes have adopted their “Superpowered Fibre Broadband” package (FTTC) and 1.2 million customers now use the free HomeSafe™ network-level filtering service.

Last, but by no means least, the ISP also makes the somewhat bold claim of being “the only provider” to offer “totally unlimited broadband on all packages without ever slowing down“. Admittedly they’re probably referring to the removal of their Traffic Management policy but that is not quite the same as “without ever slowing down“; connections can still be affected by general network congestion, poor home wiring and line length etc.