A new study conducted by budget ISP TalkTalk has claimed that over 500,000 homes in the United Kingdom are losing around 4Mbps of broadband download speed due to a bad in-home setup (e.g. poor wiring, not connecting via the Master Socket etc.). But never fear because they might just have a solution.
The research identified some of the most common problems diagnosed by TalkTalk’s own BrightSparks telecoms engineers, whom are often sent out to help improve their customers home wiring and or to setup the ISPs YouView (Plus TV) based set-top-box.
Overall 38% of the providers engineers found that speed was being lost through poor wiring, 34% reported that a router needed to be set-up or reconfigured, 15% pointed to a failure to connect via the BT master socket (plugging ADSL lines into an extension slot usually produces more interference) and 13% needed a new broadband filter to be fitted.
Keith Myles, BrightSparks Engineer, said:
“We see thousands of homes wasting broadband width simply because of a poor in home set up. People need to think about their broadband in the same way as other utilities such as water and electricity – it’s a commodity that can go to waste if you’re not careful.”
But now TalkTalk has come up with yet another method that could help to tackle the problem, an Online Service Centre. The new centre will help customers to run live checks on their broadband, phone and TV services via “in-built self-diagnosis tools” and it will also help to fix common problems like those mentioned above. Issues that cannot be resolved can be reported and tracked for further investigation.
Customers will also be able to receive SMS alerts to get the latest update on their incident. The centre will also automatically identify when customers are due a free router or when they can benefit from an engineer visit to their home or a call back from the help centre.
Tristia Harrison, TalkTalks Commercial Director, added:
“The launch of the new service centre is part of TalkTalk’s on-going commitment to improving customers’ experience. TalkTalk was recently top rated for broadband, TV and phone packages in the Which? Customer Satisfaction Survey which shows how customers are already benefitting from our efforts.”
TalkTalk might receive more complaints than some of the other big ISPs, usually for poor service and support, but they’re certainly putting a lot of effort into tackling those issues and appear to be more proactive at doing so than many of their rivals.
The new Online Service Centre is part of TalkTalk’s on-going £100m network upgrade programme, which is also supporting the cost of things like special BrightSparks engineer visits and free router upgrades.
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