Broadband ISP TalkTalk Expected to Adopt Netgem TV Service UPDATE

A number of reports today have claimed that TalkTalk will, effective from October 2021, partner up with Netgem TV to offer their UK home broadband customers access to a new set-top-box for premium TV (IPTV) services, but only those on their “ultrafast broadband” (e.g. FTTP) plans will be able to take it.

Recently, TalkTalk did appear to be taking a step back from their existing YouView (IPTV) based Pay TV products (here), although they’ve also been linked to a recently approved Android based TV box from Technicolor (UZW4054TTG). But so far the operator’s future direction, at least with respect to Pay TV services, has remained unclear.

On the flip side, Netgem TV’s box and service have already been adopted by a growing number of smaller UK ISPs, particularly alternative networks. The set-top-boxes that they provide – Netbox HD and Netbox 4K – tend to be similar to some of those supplied by rival video streaming companies, including the usual array of premium content (sports), apps (Amazon Prime Video, BT Sport, hayu, Rakuten TV, YouTube etc.), live TV channels (Freeview) and catch-up content.

According to The Express, TalkTalk will next month become the latest ISP to supply Pay TV access via the Netgem TV platform. But only customers on their “ultrafast broadband” (100Mbps+) packages will be able to access this, which is reportedly due to need for faster internet connection speeds in order to deliver the content. We’re a little sceptical of that since a single 4K video stream can run at around 20-30Mbps, but.. marketing.

Customers can reportedly expect to be charged £4 per month to access the new Netgem TV solution, which is the same entry price as TalkTalk’s existing Pay TV service. At the time of writing, we couldn’t find any official announcements about this from either TalkTalk or Netgem TV, and nor have our hails to both generated a response.

By the sounds of it, TalkTalk may announce all of this at around the same time as Sky unveil their new Sky Glass and Sky over IP (SoIP) TV service (here). But we should caution that this could also be similar to how TalkTalk have bundled Freesat TV Boxes in the recent past (here), which did not replace their main Pay TV solution.

UPDATE 4:54pm

A spokesperson for TalkTalk told ISPreview.co.uk: “We can confirm that we are in late-stage discussions with Netgem. As with everything we do, we are always looking to give our customers the best TV experience in the market.”