Broadband ISP TalkTalk UK has predicted that this Christmas will be the "most connected of all time" when an estimated 16 million gadgets go online during 25th December 2011. To help out they're offering "certain customers" a free speed optimisation visit from one of their Bright Spark engineers (usually costs £50) who will make sure that your broadband line is running at the fastest possible speed.

The provider expects its network traffic to jump by a further 25% over last Christmas and hit the dizzy heights of 320 Gigabits (roughly equivalent to over 2 million people streaming music from Spotify at the same time).


Customers can find out if they qualify for the free speed optimisation visit by using the Speed Checker on TalkTalk's website, although it's unclear what the parameters for their promotion are. Apparently their Bright Sparks have visited over 1,000 homes and have helped them get an average speed increase of around 4Mbps.