UK ISP TalkTalk (The Carphone Warehouse) has launched an Emergency Home Phone and Broadband Plan, which will give people suffering economic hardship free access to the Internet and voice calls for six months. However a £10.50 per month telephone line rental charge will still apply.

The service itself will be extremely minimalist and offer speeds of just 512Kbps (0.5Mbps), a 1GB monthly usage allowance and inclusive UK weekend calls and anytime calls to other TalkTalk customers. Premium, international and mobile calls will be barred to help limit user expenditure:


The Emergency Plan will be available from 30th January to all customers who have been with the ISP for six months or more, by calling TalkTalk customer services. Each customer’s eligibility will be judged on a case by case basis, though customers who have already been in debt to TalkTalk for more than 50 days will not be considered for inclusion until they have cleared their debt.

Once customers have been on the emergency plan for six months they will be automatically moved back to the standard myTalkTalk package. Customers will not be asked to ‘pay back’ the rest of the standard monthly tariff at any point and their normal contract will not be extended.

TalkTalk certainly deserves a lot of credit for taking this move, not least because saving a few pounds per month can make a big difference if your income is extremely low or even nonexistent.