ISP TalkTalk Business Relaunch UK Ethernet over FTTC Service
Internet provider TalkTalk Business has today relaunched their uncontended Ethernet over FTTC (EoFTTC) service to partners with improved features for small business customers. This is not to be confused with the broadband focused Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) product that consumers buy.
The EoFTTC product offers uncontended capacity (no sharing with other users), a 7 hour fix time (Service Level Agreement) if things go wrong, a dedicated network with 24/7 management and support, is available via 1 or 3 year contracts and supports both internet and MPLS IPVPN.
The product itself comes in the form of a 20Mbps symmetric speed connection, albeit with the ability to “burst” download speeds up to 76Mbps (line allowing). Meanwhile the lead times from order to activation are estimated at 30 working days.
A number of other UK ISPs also offer EoFTTC products – often based on TTB’s platform – and TTB are relaunching it following several claimed improvements to its reliability, order journey and lead time.
TTB’s EoFTTC Improvements
Reliable connectivity: Released a new firmware for the EoFTTC modem making customers’ connections more reliable and stable than before (sadly they don’t say how it achieves this).
Seamless order journey: Partner internal order updates have been refreshed and automated to ensure Partners receive the information needed to keep customers completely abreast of progress all the way from order placement to handover.
Improved lead time: Key sections within the internal order journey have been automated to deliver faster lead times (despite this claim they’re still promoting the same lead time of 30 days as before).
Admittedly it may seem a bit unusual to be relaunching EoFTTC at a time when the mainstream is so focused upon full fibre, although the reality is that pure fibre optic connections will take a fair few years to reach most areas and in the meantime many locations are going to be stuck with older connectivity. Since not everybody needs a dedicated leased line or EFM solution then EoFTTC can sometimes act as a cheaper fix until something better arrives.
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 X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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I have 3 x EoFTTC from TTB and they are usually OK. Good speeds (as good as FTTC syncronisation). The only pain is that this requires separate FTTC modem and sometimes the modem can freezes. As the modems are ‘invisible’ from end user point of view – there is no way or restarting it remotely. Only manual power-cycling will make it work again. Small inconvenience but still rather annoying.
Hope this helps.
Are they Comtrend boxes?
I don’t have any direct experience of this product but it is usually possibly to make the modem visible from the RJ45 ethernet side assuming you can access the UI.
The issue is more if the modem is Donald Ducked can you connect from the outside world to anything.
So usually we plug a 4G USB into the router/firewall for remote access to restart things.
Call TTB support or your reseller. They will arrange a FoC engineer to upgrade the modem to the latest version next or same day.
Could someone explain what the benefits are of this versus a standard FTTC line with a good provider (i.e. no contention)?
Does anything happen within the Openreach network to remove contention?
@Bill
There is usually no overlap between OR consumer and business backhaul routing. And OK that is OR routing but Talk Talk *may* just be using OR routing and picking up at the headend with their own links. Or Talk Talk may be getting links from BT Wholesale or SES.
Business connections cost more because of the better bandwidth allocated with backhaul.
In this case it ‘appears’, from the sparse information provided, that 20/20 is allocated uncontended. Anything greater is allowed but ‘best efforts’ only.
It all depends what you want to do with the connection – if you want to extend your LAN between branch offices without LAN -> WAN -> LAN this kind of product is ultra useful as it allows full ethernet protocols, as the name suggests. Of course there are other reasons for wanting one of these as well maybe the better SLA etc.
If you just need a connection for surfing then it is of no more use than a standard FTTC and you can save money.
Mine are. Pretty shoddy consumer grade kit. If things go wrong they send a Qube tech out.
We have three TTB EoFTTC connections. They’re good solid connections and the support is great. The Comtrend VR-3030 boxes they send out are utter garbage. Our newest connection has been up for around two weeks, and in that two weeks we’re on our third modem because it they drop the connection every 15 minutes. The third modem was installed today and has been stable for 9 hours without dropping so fingers crossed!
We have a provider that defers to TalkTalk for FTTC services, and they use the Comtrend boxes as well. Complete crap. I can’t count the amount of times we’ve had to kick them because they are in sync but just not interested in keeping a PPPoE session alive.
With some “business broadband” packages offering a “speed guarantee” and “Critical care” (e.g. Zen), an EoFTTC service offering just a 20Mb guarantee doesnt seem enticing enough for a typical small business to warrant the increase in price. Even consumer broadband packages are offering speed guarantees it seems.
If the serviced is delivered over FTTC and authenticated using a PPPoE session, can you just use any compatible FTTC modem and not be forced to use the provided Comtrend?
It isn’t the speed that is the issue it is the protocols that are fully supported that make it attractive.
It has has a different usage case to straight FTTC.
Agreed straight FTTC would be more useful for most SME’s and also agreed that Zen or Cerberus et al would be good on that.
Very poor service had 10 months of problems and still making me paying far services am no getting with the WiFi keeps cutting off at 10 pm no back on at 9 or 10 am next morning no happy and i keep phoneing them every 2nd day getting no away