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Should I renew or wait?

I am currently with TalkTalk. My contract with them expires on 27th March. When the contract expires, the monthly cost of my landline and broadband (fixed costs) will double (ish). So I'm obviously keen to either sign a new contact with TalkTalk or jump ship to another provider to keep my costs low (the deal on HotUKDeals at the moment of £7.50 all in for Sky - line rental and broadband seems irresistible).

However...... my exchange (NDLEN) was due, according to Samknows to activate FTTC on 1st March .... but nothing seems to have happened yet. When it does happen, I'm not even sure if it will be worthwhile for me - I'm about 1.4 miles, as the crow flies, from where the new FTTC cabinet was installed, and about 2 miles by road (rural area - so no other viable cabinets so far as I know).

My current sync speed is 5276 kbps down.

I'm after views on whether it is worthwhile hanging on to see what FTTC might offer, or to forget it and just worry about getting myself on the best existing deal for my current connection.
 
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TalkTalk are one of the cheapest ISPs in the market and so if you're looking to save money then you'd struggle to find alternatives, although Tesco, Direct Save Telecom and Primus Saver often like to battle it out.

Also do you have a link to the HotUKDeals promo because £7.50 sounds like the Sky Broadband Unlimited price for just broadband + weekend calls with Sky TV.. we rarely ever see ISPs do a discount on line rental beyond the pre-paid option.

As for FTTC, if you currently get a sync speed of 5Mbps+ then it's possible that you might just be able to handle an FTTC service but your speed wouldn't be much higher. I'd recommend waiting until the service is available to order and then running a test using the BT Wholesale ADSL Availability tester to see what you can get (or indeed TalkTalk's checker).
 
The only non BT options at my exchange are TalkTalk and Sky.
TalkTalk are cheap when you are in a contract, but they raise there prices a lot when your contract expires - you can then either negotiate another "introductory offer" or switch to beat the status quo (They obviously rely on the inertia from those who don't bother to switch - like all of the utilities!)

The Sky deal on HUKD is here: http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sky-12-line-rental-unlimited-broadband-12-50pm-with-voucher-1843176

The headline reads £12.50 per month - but if you read the comments, its going through for £7.50 per month.

Thanks for the information on FTTC - if the improvement is going to be marginal (at best) then it doesn't sound like it will be worth the extra £10 a month that I believe is typically charged.....

I presume all of the companies share the FTTC? So it makes no difference (in terms of receiving a FTTC service) if I go through BT equipment, Sky equipment or TalkTalk equipment?
 
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You might consider taking a short contract with the likes of xilo, aaisp or one of the other isp's that do a monthly contract.

It would then leave you free to have a fresh look at things if and when FTTC is available.
 
Thanks for the suggestion - definitely worth consideration. I didn't even know you could get non contract broadband.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to quite work for me at the moment. xilo charge a £40 connection fee from TalkTalk and aaisp looks quite expensive (at a glance). FTTC is already overdue, so I'm not expecting a long wait to know (please correct me if I'm wrong), so I feel if I wait then its probably best to just stick with TalkTalk, out of contract, until I make my mind up.

Having said that, I'm not really expecting a significant improvement with FTTC anyway, given my distance from the cabinet, so I'm tempted to just stick with the copper connection, in which case I may as well renew now.

Unfortunately the £7.50 deal with Sky is gone - looks like it was an error that they've corrected (but it seems they are honouring it for those that got it), however the £12.50 for Unlimited Broadband, Line rental and Talk Weekends still seems pretty good and is tempting..... The £12.50 deal expires on 13th March (I think).
 
Still no sign of FTTC and so I've taken the plunge and signed up to Sky.

However, they tell me that they cannot migrate the line from TalkTalk - they've told me that I have to get a new line (£20) and that I cannot keep my current telephone number. Surely this cannot be right? I have a perfectly good line, but because of the LLU competitive environment I have to get a second line installed? Seems crazy...... On the flip side, they're pretty insistent that in spite of this, I do not need to cancel my line with TalkTalk because they will do all of that (even though they cannot take the line over and even though from their perspective it seems they're just installing a new line.

I just cannot get my head around this.......
 
Talk Talk have a reputation of refusing to hand back phone lines they have LLU'd. I have just had a new line put in for just that reason.

£20 for a new line is a major discount - BT charge £150, although apparently the BTOR charge rate is only £60, the rest is BT profit.
 
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Talk Talk have a reputation of refusing to hand back phone lines they have LLU'd. I have just had a new line put in for just that reason.

Just coming back to this - Sky told me that they couldn't migrate the line from TalkTalk at the time I placed the order - they didn't even give TalkTalk the opportunity to migrate the line.

I understand £20 is ridiculously cheap for a new line - however its a new line I don't want or need - so its £20 for nothing (I currently have and use 1 line - after the migration I will still only use 1 line) - it still seems like a crazy bureaucratic mess!
 
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