ISP Reviews by nbsimmons

After an initial bad start to broadband in our new home with Three, I was even more vigilant to check reviews.

I was reluctant but decided to try TalkTalk. I found a deal via uSwitch and they were happy to match the deal but give me extra off to total £19.99/month for 73mb broadband. This made me wary but they had their "30 speed promise" (effectively an extended cooling-off period) so I thought, why not?

It took near on 3 weeks to get activated (mainly due to OpenReach's lead time from Corona so don't be put off) but when the day come, the line was active and usable with no downtime and I was sent the router well in advance.

In terms of speed, my router syncs at 61 and I get an actual download of 55 - 58 so they're meeting the minimum I was told (equates to about 6.5 - 7.5MB/s).

As for the router, you get something fairly standard. Dual-band AC, 4 gig. ports etc etc. The UI isn't the most user friendly but allows for DNS server change(s) at a router level which is a big bonus - especially if you use something like PiHole. You do have the ability to use your own which I plan to do so.

For £19.99 i'm fairly happy.

Well, I'm fairly disappointed to say the least. I moved house around two to three weeks ago and we needed broadband. After looking around and the current situation of OpenReach, I decided to trail Three's 4G home broadband option. After signing up with their non-contract, unlimited data option, I sat patiently for the router to arrive. I didn't get any dispatch notification so was a little worried it wasn't going to arrive - sure enough, it arrived as promised. So far so good.

After opening the box, sticking in the SIM card and turning the router on - we had internet! A solid 5 bars and a nice 70 down/30 up. Again, brilliant.

After using the internet for some time though, things started to go downhill. We started to incurr a minor issue wher things would need to be refreshed a second time to load. The page would begin to load but then "fail" with no error. I have to manually stop the browser and reload - the page then loads instantly.

The connection or speed can't be faulted but it's the intermittent issue that makes it unbearable to use and work with. I've tried numerous restarts, a factory reset and also a third-party router plugged into the modem but neither work.

I'm still, at the time of this review, trying to get second-level support to fix the issue and as a result will be cancelling in the cooling down period.