The saga of TalkTalk

TalkTalk (from the Carphone Warehouse) are offering “free” broadband.

The deal is you sign up to TalkTalk as your phone provider (£11 line rental a month - the same as BT), take out one of the call plans for 18 months (£9.99 a month which includes unlimited* local, national and international** calls) and pay a £29.99 setup fee. For this you get up to 8Mb broadband (very likely to be lower though) with a 40Gb download limit and an ADSL modem.

Total cost (for 18 months): £407.81, about £22.66 a month. Seems like a good deal. TalkTalk

* Calls must last less than 70 minutes. ** To a list of 28 countries including America, Australia and most of Europe.

My post about free broadband from TalkTalk has got a fair bit of traffic, in fact it’s been the most popular page since a day after I posted. I don’t think that implies the post is any good but just that lots of people are looking for info about the offer. According to the Register, Carphone Warehouse have had to withdraw their advert claiming “free broadband” since it’s bundled and therefore not free. Personally I disagree. Since the service it’s bundled with was available before at the same price, the broadband is still technically free. The same people that made this ruling by the way also said that unlimited doesn’t have to actually mean unlimited (as with most broadband “fair use” policies) if the terms are displayed. This is far easier to disagree with since calling it unlimited is wrong both simply and technically. Anyway the comments have revealed the following issues it seems:

• Limited P2P traffic - Sort of a non-issue since they clearly say they will limit peer-to-peer traffic. Worth noting if you didn’t know already though.
• Limited gaming traffic - They didn’t say explicitly that this could be throttled so more of a worry.
• Dodgy proxy server redirecting requests for non existent pages - Annoying and slightly disturbing although not a major problem. Installing Google Web Accelerator may solve this as it does it’s own proxying.
• Generally bad service - Quite a few complaints about the service not being fast etc. Not very quantitative but certainly bad for people switching to get more speed.

Although I haven’t read the terms, it may be possible to back out of the broadband free of charge. Since it is bundled after all (you’re paying for the calling plan) you may still be able to switch providers afterwards. You’ll still have to pay the £9.99 a month though but you could just make lots of calls… Phil Jones has an unofficial guide to setting up TalkTalk broadband that bypasses a lot of the problems and can help you solve others.

Well the comments by people having problems with TalkTalk are still trickling in and I’ve still yet to experience any of them. Although it does seem the biggest problem is customer service which I haven’t had reason to encounter yet.

Some of the people trying to cancel their TalkTalk subscriptions have apparently had success email Charles Dunsonte, Carphone Warehouse’s CEO, directly. Two email addressed have been suggested. I haven’t personally tried either so I can’t guarantee any sort of result.

A few recent entries to the list of problems with TalkTalk seem like they could be software related.

People not being able to use MSN Messenger or having problems getting their TalkTalk email for instance. The first one could be caused by a badly configured firewall which the TalkTalk software installs and the second by an apparent typo in the default mail settings. The reason I bring this up is because installing the the TalkTalk software is one thing I never did. Since I was going to use a router with a modem built in I didn’t bother waiting for my welcome pack and just tried from the day they said the broadband would be active and everything worked fine.

The irony is one of the first things any broadband technical support would ask you if you had a problem would be whether you are using a modem or a router since a modem should be simpler.

Phil Jones has written a guide to getting TalkTalk broadband working.

Importantly the guide tells you how to do it without using the setup CD - quite a few of the problems people have had might not have happened had they not used the CD.

It’s in depth, complete and for the most part anyone should be able to follow it. I’m not sure the average user would be up to fitting a network card (something only a few people would have to do) but as he says, you may know someone who could help.

Yesterday I received a letter from TalkTalk announcing their equipment had been installed in my local exchange and that I would be connected at the end of March. Which according to some people may be the same time that I lose my internet access and phone line. They say it should only go down for twenty minutes and make big deal out of the fact that BT engineers will be doing the actual changeover. Luckily I have internet access at work so I’ll let you know either way.

I just got an email announcing that due to some sort of technical difficulties, my unbundling has been put back. No word on a new date either.

Charles Dunstone, a well known entrepreneur and founder of Carphone Warehouse has quit as chair of the Royal Museums Greenwich.

Apparently, the government refused to reappoint a trustee because they advocated for “decolonising” the curriculum. More information is available on the Financial Times.

Normally I wouldn’t be interested in posting about such things, but my blog has a bit of history with Charles Dunstone. He was in charge of UK ISP TalkTalk when it came out. Some people had problems and people complaining about it resulted in my most popular blog post.

Some of the complaints led to some interesting solutions, and I briefly included Charles Dunstone’s email address.