Broadband Guide

TalkTalk fibre optic broadband

Monday 5 November, 2011

By Helen Thomas

Although TalkTalk has not developed its own fibre broadband network, it does offer customers a fibre optic “boost”.

Despite TalkTalk (www.Talktalk.co.uk) being the UK’s largest ”unbundler” for regular broadband - where a provider installs its own equipment in telephone exchanges - it has not yet developed its own fibre network.

However, by wholesaling parts of the BT Openreach fibre network - the division of BT (www.BT.com) which manages access to the telephone network for all broadband providers - TalkTalk does offer a fibre optic broadband “boost” to customers on its Essentials or Plus broadband packages.

This boost option offers increased speeds of up to 40Mb for an additional monthly charge on top of customers’ existing monthly payments.

Use our postcode checker to see the fibre broadband options available in your area.

Future plans

At present, TalkTalk has no plans to develop its own fibre network, but will listen to customer demand in the future. It says: “Currently, customer demand for our Fibre Optic Boost is low due to the price premium and the considerable improvements in the speed and reliability of the existing services.

“We’re ready to meet demand when more consumers require fibre in the future.”

Government’s £830million superfast plans

Last year, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt outlined the government’s £830million strategy to equip the UK with the best broadband network in Europe by 2015.

Plans include the provision of a “digital hub” within every community in the UK, bridging the connectivity gap between the urban broadband “haves” and the rural broadband “have-nots”.

Benefits of fibre

Fibre cable is designed to transfer data at lightning fast speeds and, unlike traditional copper wire, fibre does not experience such a significant decline in connection speed as distance from the telephone exchange increases, or with decreasing line quality.

This is why providers refer to fibre optic broadband as “future-proof”.

The benefits of fibre are:

• Actual connection speeds that are within 85% of the advertised top speeds
• Fast and reliable connections mean high quality films can be downloaded in minutes
• No more buffering delays during music, TV or video streaming
• Multiple users can be online at the same time without it affecting the connection speed

TalkTalk Broadband deals

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