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Talktalk late to the FTTP party in my area

davecm

Casual Member
Openreach completed their FTTP build in my area earlier this year. All major ISPs except for Talktalk have been offering FTTP at my address for 2-3 months.
My Talktalk contract was renewed shortly prior to that on the basis of their assurance that they would offer FTTP as soon as Openreach made it available, but it hasn't happened.
Anybody know if this is typical for Talktalk, or what the reason for the delay might be, e.g. does specific hardware need to be installed in street cabinets for each ISP?
Their Future Fibre and Sales teams seem to have no idea when it will be available.
I may be inclined to cancel, on the basis that I was mis-sold, and switch to Plusnet, which would be same price as Talktalk.
Anyone had a similar experience, cancelled, with or without fee?
 
It's not just a TalkTalk thing, but can occur with other service providers as well on the wholesale platforms, typically where they have insufficient backhaul or Cablelink capacity at the serving exchange (Openreach) or FEX (CityFibre).

Sometimes they limit what FTTP packages they can sell (i.e. not offering the fastest tiers), other times they may not offer any FTTP service at all in that area until their backhaul/links are upgraded or installed.

It will get resolved at some point, but difficult to pinpoint an exact lead-time; it could be weeks or months.

What area are you in?
 
Thanks for your reply. I'm at DE11 9QL. BT wholesale checker says it's available at my address and I had an email from Openreach, as I had signed up for an alert as to when it became available. It was available simultaneously from everyone else :) except TT, and has been available for many months from TT at a couple of other properties I own nearby.
Some comparison sites, but not others or TT themselves, seem to be offering Talktalk FTTP at my address and at their standard pricing. Might be an error, if those sites are basing availability on the BT wholesale checker I guess.
The fact that TT have a "Future Fibre" team and dedicated phone number whose call centre seems to be in Ireland, might suggest they are not yet geared up to support large numbers of FTTP customers or the Eero router and Grandstream ATA which come with the faster packages. That might explain a slower than expected rollout.
 
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You could wait or you could try and get out of your existing contract - however unless you have something from them in writing to suggest that the renewal was predicated on them delivering FTTP during the term of the new contract - I don’t like your chances. Salesman patter unfortunately.
 
Thanks for your reply. I'm at DE11 9QL. BT wholesale checker says it's available at my address and I had an email from Openreach, as I had signed up for an alert as to when it became available. It was available simultaneously from everyone else :) except TT, and has been available for many months from TT at a couple of other properties I own nearby.
Some comparison sites, but not others or TT themselves, seem to be offering Talktalk FTTP at my address and at their standard pricing. Might be an error, if those sites are basing availability on the BT wholesale checker I guess.
The fact that TT have a "Future Fibre" team and dedicated phone number whose call centre seems to be in Ireland, might suggest they are not yet geared up to support large numbers of FTTP customers or the Eero router and Grandstream ATA which come with the faster packages. That might explain a slower than expected rollout.
Talktalk don't use BT Wholesale backhaul at the local telephone exchange.

I would vote with your feet and find a provider who does.

It comes down to cost and the likes of talktalk are not interested in gaining a customer on a BT Wholesale backhaul before switching them to their own backhaul.

Back in the ADSL days when talktalk started, they would happily put you on a BT Wholesale service and then migrate you at their convenience.

They don't seem that interested in gaining or retaining these days
 
Thanks for that info. Very useful. Supports the view that I was mis-sold when I renewed my contract. That was based on an assurance from their Future Fibre team that FTTP would be made available as soon as Openreach finished commissioning the infrastructure.
 
For the record, Talktalk assert that Meritez' comment:-
"Talktalk don't use BT Wholesale backhaul at the local telephone exchange."
is only true in Hull and York. Everywhere else they do use BT backhaul, according to one of their forum moderator employees, who was pretty insistent on correcting that.
I am pursuing the mis-selling issue via their complaints procedure. As Pheasant mentioned, I don't have anything in writing, as their Future Fibre team seems to operate only by phone, from Ireland, where I guess they are fully trained in blarney, as indeed are my own Irish relatives :)
 
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For the record, Talktalk assert that Meritez' comment:-
"Talktalk don't use BT Wholesale backhaul at the local telephone exchange."
is only true in Hull and York. Everywhere else they do use BT backhaul, according to one of their forum moderator employees, who was pretty insistent on correcting that.
I am pursuing the mis-selling issue via their complaints procedure. As Pheasant mentioned, I don't have anything in writing, as their Future Fibre team seems to operate only by phone, from Ireland, where I guess they are fully trained in blarney, as indeed are my own Irish relatives :)
Categorically they don’t use BTW for backhaul - they use their own.
 
Thanks for your reply Pheasant, so possibly more blarney from Talktalk :unsure:. Could be that they have capacity issues, or are indeed simply late to the party.
I'll be away for a while, so will wait and see if their complaints procedure produces termination without a fee, or they might even have arrived at the FTTP party by then 🥳 in which case I can upgrade and stay with them.
I'm not prepared to be locked into a Fibre 65 contract for the next 20-odd months on the basis of misinformation.
I have a contractual insurance obligation to implement 3-2-1 backup with 1 being off-site, so that's fully automated with a NAS file sync system and its provider's cloud backup service. Fibre 65 works fine with that for incremental backups in around 15 min, but the initial backup, or a full refresh takes 36 hours, and a NAS restore takes 12 hours. I chose that method as I knew it would become properly viable with sensible backup and restore times, based on FTTP being available this year as planned.
I made my setup FTTP-ready in advance, with a wi-fi 6 router, ATA and non-ISP VOIP, so whichever ISP I went with (excluding Virgin) it would just be a matter of unplugging router from Openreach modem, and plugging into new Openreach ONT.
Plusnet telesales offered slightly cheaper prices and more speed tiers, up to 900Mbits, than shown on their website (500), so seems like the most cost-effective option.
If TT don't agree a fee-free termination, I could sign up for Plusnet, keep my Talktalk landline based service for a while, after FTTP installed and working, then cancel TT service and direct debit.
 
Look write to them and tell them you’re leaving, as they’ve not fulfilled the promise made when you renewed your agreement with them. Refer to the conversation / person etc at the time - there should be call recording in place. You can always push it harder by going to the ombudsman if they refuse your demand. Do not however cancel any direct debits etc., as that automatically puts you in a default position
 
@davecm I wouldn't take anything they say on that forum seriously, as someone who watched them try to sack any employees who signed up and tried to help customers on that forum.

Ten years ago, talktalk closed down the contact centre I worked at, and for the last nine years I have sold talktalk business connections via the business ISP I work for.

My talktalk business account manager advises that talktalk will always be slow to make fttp available as they don't use BT Wholesale backhaul, they order their own which takes a minimum of six weeks to be installed, and eight weeks to go live.

They've been losing sales from us because of this, which they're aware of but don't care.

It's almost like they are trying to retain the customer base for a takeover from another ISP.
 
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My talktalk business account manager advises that talktalk will always be slow to make fttp available as they don't use BT Wholesale backhaul, they order their own which takes a minimum of six weeks to be installed, and eight weeks to go live.
It very much depends on the serving exchange.

I had a Cerberus FTTP connection for 2 years before I moved to TTB. In that time TT had launched FTTP so fortunately for me here was no issue getting TTB served at 900Mbps
 
Thanks again for your replies. It's useful to have feedback from sources other than the Talktalk forum. I'd also read rumours about a takeover. This article is an amusing read. Bad Mobile operator stalks bad ISP :rolleyes: (My headline). Their sub-heading is:
"When plotting a (sic) unsuitable merger, prepare to dig two graves"

I'll give them a while longer, as we are not far off the 14 weeks Meritez mentioned above. Staying with TT on FTTP would avoid hassle, and as they use dynamic IP I should literally be able to unplug my own router from the Openreach VDSL modem and plug it into the ONT.

ONT would have to go on an outside wall and near a power socket. That's around 15 metres from the router location, which is effectively fixed as it has 5 ethernet devices connected to it, some of which in turn have HDMI cables embedded in the wall. Has anybody tried connecting the ONT to a router via powerline adaptors, and do they actually work well at the advertised speeds? If so, any recommendations as to brand and model? I'd probably go for 500Mbits. If not, I will pre-install an ethernet cable in mini-trunking.

I did ask for an address to make a written complaint, but was just provided with a chat link. I'd already tried that and was passed repeatedly in circles between 3 different chat teams over a 2 hour period and got nowhere. I had the same experience when I tried it by phone. Nobody has the authority to waive a termination fee, or if they do, nobody can contact them. :sleep:

It's quite interesting to observe the disjointed nature of their business processes, as my own role used to involve designing, documenting and training quite similar processes.
 
Has anybody tried connecting the ONT to a router via powerline adaptors, and do they actually work well at the advertised speeds? If so, any recommendations as to brand and model? I'd probably go for 500Mbits. If not, I will pre-install an ethernet cable in mini-trunking.
I’ve previously said my piece on here before about powerline adapters being the work of the devil (or is that Devolo. Sorry couldn’t resist 😂)

If you can at all get a data cable in, it will be the best for long term reliability of throughput. When powerline adapters are “having a bad day” they will perform worse than obstructed WiFi.

Obviously I’m not a fan 🤣
 
It's useful to have feedback from sources other than the Talktalk forum. I'd also read rumours about a takeover. This article is an amusing read. Bad Mobile operator stalks bad ISP :rolleyes: (My headline). Their sub-heading is:
"When plotting a (sic) unsuitable merger, prepare to dig two graves"
Think that’s old news.

Last weeks news about the Three & Vodafone UK merger is the hot topic of gossip.

In the meantime TalkTalk purchased Virtual1 (whom I use as a business service provider elsewhere) and there have been ‘unusual’ accountancy murmurs.

So the usual derisory comments about TT ensue…😂
 
Think that’s old news.

Last weeks news about the Three & Vodafone UK merger is the hot topic of gossip.

In the meantime TalkTalk purchased Virtual1 (whom I use as a business service provider elsewhere) and there have been ‘unusual’ accountancy murmurs.

So the usual derisory comments about TT ensue…😂

At my mother's we have been with TalkTalk since around 2007/2008, and really the only problems we ever had were down to BT/Openreach.

At the old house whenever it rained or snowed heavily the internet would just cut off, often for a few days.
When she moved 9 years ago to where she lives now, there has just been a never-ending line fault, which affects the neighbours as well. TalkTalk would just keep throwing new routers at the problem, I literally have a box full of them because they just kept saying to dispose of them rather than send them back. Obviously it never fixed the fault because the router was 'fine' the whole time.

Her whole town was cabled for Openreach FTTP early last year, it was supposedly meant to go live by the end of the year, but that never happened.
 
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