The budget ISP price war continues today as UK ISP TalkTalk discounts their standard unlimited and superfast “fibre” (FTTC / VDSL2) broadband packages down to an even lower level. Prices now start at £17 a month for ‘Fast Broadband‘ (17Mbps) and £22.50 for ‘Faster Fibre‘ (38Mbps) etc.
All new subscribers will receive unlimited data usage, included phone line rental, a wireless router, no setup fee and various other features (e.g. network-level Parental Controls, nuisance call blocking and Internet Security). TalkTalk also pledges to “guarantee no mid-contract price rises on all our broadband packages.”
Fast Broadband (up to 17Mbps down / 1Mbps up)
12 Month Contract
Price: £17 a month for 24 months (£27 thereafter)Faster Fibre (up to 38Mbps down / 9.5Mbps up)
18 Month Contract
Price: £22.50 a month for 24 months (£33.50 thereafter)Faster Fibre Speed Boost (up to 76Mbps down / 19Mbps up)
18 Month Contract
Price: £27.50 a month for 24 months (£38.50 thereafter)
As usual you can also pay an extra +£7 per month to add their premium TV service (plus £25 one-off for the set-top-box). The ‘Fast Broadband’ offer is available until 12th July, while the ‘Fibre’ offers are only expected to run until 31st May 2018.
Is TalkTalk in a race to the bottom with Voda, or just trying to catch its attention as a takeover target before it runs out of cash? Much like its suggested use of Virgin Media’s infrastructure was probably a ruse to start dialogue with the cable company, another potential purchaser.
They need to grow scale after recent problems and that’s difficult now that Vodafone are playing the same game, especially as the latter appears to have enough money to out-subsidise their packages vs TalkTalk.
I don’t know whether either (despite low price) is tempting, because of them both having poor reputation – TT for customer data losses, Vodafone (mobile) for poor CS.
I know Plus.Net has had its problems and definitely helped cause some of its own grief by probably promoting service without having enough CS staff, which has meant 2-3 years of long queues to reach CS, but I was with them in 2003 and happy with them, nearly all of the time.
A one-off fee for fixed IP even at the home user end makes them a better bet than some of the niche ISPs which charge some monthly fee for same… and have higher fees overall, and often shorter hours for support.
I know a fixed IP is non-essential but some ISPs would probably never entertain the idea, or require a business account (yet it is handy for something like TBB’s quality monitoring or SamKnows box).
But don’t use their email services, latest downtime story at https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/18/talktalk_email_down/
Rather than pay £27.50/month and be tied into an 18 month contract, I’d suggest taking a look at SSE fibre broadband where you get a rolling monthly contract and, very importantly – UK based staff, for £30/month.
Don’t SSE have a bad rep for being really aggressive with their traffic shaping and throttling?
@IT Troll
Multiple people have run recent speed tests and found no slowdowns throughout the day(including P2P), so whatever management they use it doesn’t seem to be having a negative impact.
Talk Talk rubish. Dont go with them. Upgraded to fibre (which is actually 90% copper and it is always dropping out slower than standard broadband. Full of excuses can’t wait till September when my contract is up.
Will never use them again
Martin
Static IP, 76mb down and 20mb up unlimited is good. I’m with TT for that at 30 a month, they’re dropping my price to 27.50 too so pleased with that. I’ve only ever had 1 problem – speed dropped back due to fiddly extension in house. Fixed it, contacted TT to reset profile. They said they would and next day they did. Much better experience than in the past with TT and plus net. Do they still throttle traffic?
Currently in the the process of leaving Talk Talk. Relief! An abysmal company who falsely advertise their services. The Net at hhome constantly dropped after 6pm when everyone in the street jumped online. Complained and asked numerous times why I wasn’t getting my speeds as standard and they’d always offer IT Support which went through the repetitive motions. It’s very plain to see that no ISP can offer your home a better service becaus they’re all running from your same local junction box. It’s all one huge con market. I now have no landline and hub and it’s a lot more stress free knowing I’m not being ripped by these corporate ISP’s
It is usual Myth about cables. C’mon people. Cabinet to Exchange handles 10 GB per second. It is 1000 and more users at 100Mbit. Problem is greed. ISP (Tier 3) doesn’t buy enough traffic from Tier 1 providers.
The price drop is good, but recently they had 76/19 on offer for £25 and so I managed to increase my speed and decrease my cost. They do lock you in for 18 months but the price is fixed for the term. However you scan still switch to a cheaper offer if one comes up. I actually get 70/19 and don’t experience any throttling or disconnects.
Been with Pulse8 for three years receiving Talk Talk through them, I decided to go with Talk Talk on there £17 a month package back in Feb this year the speeds have been better than with Pulse8..for me, a good move
Just upgraded with TalkTalk to Fibre so was very surprised to find it is not fibre as it still uses the copper pair phone line. It may link to a fibre connection somewhere but I call this false advertising. Speeds can only be as fast as the slowest link in the chain so will be running lots of speed tests during return period to see if there is a significant improvement on TalkTalks cheaper non fibre offering that I upgraded from.