Is it good to talk talk?
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manonthemoon
- Posts: 37
- Joined: Mon May 04, 2009 4:48 pm
Hi - I posted a question about broadband speed and got some helpful replies, and it seems that using providers other than BT can help with a more stable/faster connection. But the only LLU other provider in my area is Talk Talk. Has anyone switched from BT Broadband to Talk Talk and found that their trading connection improved, got worse, or was just the same? I don't want to fall for the 'grass is greener' temptation, but the BT connection does tend to get 'sticky' in our village when everyone's online. Not sure if Talk Talk will help but you may have had experience of this and any info would be great. Thanks
If it get sticky when everyone in the village gets on-line then it sounds like a contention issue. Unless Talk Talk have actively improved something at the exchange (in which I assume BT own all the original hardware)I don't think they will have improved things. They may (I don't know but google should tell all) however introduce traffic shaping/port throttling above and beyond what BT implement already which could create the illusion of a better connection IF you are not a "heavy user"(downloading large files regularly etc).
Having said all that I recently had a talk talk representative call at my house telling me that Talk Talk WERE upgrading in the local area and if I switched I could be upgraded to 20meg a second from 8meg.
It would be worthwhile calling both BT and Talk Talk. Obviously you will need your sales talk filter turned on but you can ask if Talk Talk if they plan on making any hardware upgrades in your area and whether they plan on or already have reduced the contention ratio in comparison to BT(although with out upgrading the exchange this means limiting the amount of customers, not exactly a strategy of any mass service provider). You can ask the same questions to BT who should also have an idea if talk talk have requested to/or have improved the infrastructure in your area.
TBH I have always stuck with BT(I don't live in a Virgin or cable area) for the simple reason that they own the majority of the hardware in the phone network. If something goes wrong I know the buck stops with them. They can't fob me off with "its a problem with our supplier". They have hardware technicians who will come out and sort any problems. The only downside is that if the problem is determined to be between the socket and your router/modem/phone its considered to be your problem and then you get a whacking great bill.
Tash
Having said all that I recently had a talk talk representative call at my house telling me that Talk Talk WERE upgrading in the local area and if I switched I could be upgraded to 20meg a second from 8meg.
It would be worthwhile calling both BT and Talk Talk. Obviously you will need your sales talk filter turned on but you can ask if Talk Talk if they plan on making any hardware upgrades in your area and whether they plan on or already have reduced the contention ratio in comparison to BT(although with out upgrading the exchange this means limiting the amount of customers, not exactly a strategy of any mass service provider). You can ask the same questions to BT who should also have an idea if talk talk have requested to/or have improved the infrastructure in your area.
TBH I have always stuck with BT(I don't live in a Virgin or cable area) for the simple reason that they own the majority of the hardware in the phone network. If something goes wrong I know the buck stops with them. They can't fob me off with "its a problem with our supplier". They have hardware technicians who will come out and sort any problems. The only downside is that if the problem is determined to be between the socket and your router/modem/phone its considered to be your problem and then you get a whacking great bill.
Tash
the exchanges are actually owned by a subsiduary of bt as a seperate company these days. I think it might bt wholesale or retail or something?? So you are in the same boat as someone who has talk talk or bt as your supplier these days when it comes to repairs!
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manonthemoon
- Posts: 37
- Joined: Mon May 04, 2009 4:48 pm
thanks all and thanks Mctash - I reckon you're right about BT being the lesser of the two evils! At least until I have more options than just TalkTalk. Cheers, MoonMan
Oh I didn't know that, thanks Jim 
I forgot to mention the below also. It may be worth checking out.
As a BT customer you may not be aware that part of your BTHomeHub is partitioned off for the BT Fon program which you actively have to opt out of. The basics of this is that if you are a BT Broadband customer you can jump on to any participating BTHomeHub wireless router your in range of.
See here http://www.btfon.com/
Here is a quote from BT FON Faq page
) and now check your response time again. Suddenly its up 300-400ms.
Personally I was gob smacked when I discovered this. I pay 30 a month for my supposed unlimited connection (try doing over 100gigs of transfers in a month and quickly discover how unlimited it really is). BT then proceed to resell access to my router which I have already paid them for(You can buy FON network time from BT even if you don't participate in the FON scheme )
You can opt out on that site.
Tash
I forgot to mention the below also. It may be worth checking out.As a BT customer you may not be aware that part of your BTHomeHub is partitioned off for the BT Fon program which you actively have to opt out of. The basics of this is that if you are a BT Broadband customer you can jump on to any participating BTHomeHub wireless router your in range of.
See here http://www.btfon.com/
Here is a quote from BT FON Faq page
This means that who ever is paying for that connection is sharing their connection with you. BT insist that the person who pays for the connection is prioritized on their own homehub.However in this day and age 8mb downlink isn't exactly alot to start with and 1mb uplink is pathetic. Although there isn't much information regarding the technical implementation details its not hard to imagine that a guest in the BT FON partition of your router hammering torrents would negatively affect your response time. I'm not sure if you have any online games but to see what I mean start one up and check your response time (COD 4 or something similar). To a UK server you should see a response time of sub 100ms. Now start a torrent in the background, maybe a linux distribution or similar (lets try to keep it legalWill it slow my internet connection speed?
Most people use a very small percentage (2-10%) of the bandwidth they have available, so this is unlikely. That said, FON gives you the ability to control how much you want to share through the La Fonera router. Via our easy to use web interface you can dial up or dial down the amount you are sharing in order to insure you always have enough bandwidth for your needs. If you join BTFON through BT Total Broadband this apply as well as the system will prioritise bandwidth in favour of the hotspot owner.
) and now check your response time again. Suddenly its up 300-400ms.Personally I was gob smacked when I discovered this. I pay 30 a month for my supposed unlimited connection (try doing over 100gigs of transfers in a month and quickly discover how unlimited it really is). BT then proceed to resell access to my router which I have already paid them for(You can buy FON network time from BT even if you don't participate in the FON scheme )
You can opt out on that site.
Tash