TalkTalk Broadband: Worth It? 2022 Deals & Pricing

TalkTalk has emerged as one of the UK’s major broadband providers with 4 million customers in its books. TalkTalk currently offers both broadband and fibre broadband deals as part of its internet service. Let's take a closer look at how much TalkTalk broadband costs and whether it's any good.

TalkTalk Broadband Deals

Depending on your needs, TalkTalk has a relatively wide range of broadband products, so you should be able to find one to suit your needs. Its packages are also among the most affordable of the UK’s major providers. Let’s take a look at them, starting with their most basic deal:

TalkTalk Fast Broadband

With streaming videos becoming something almost everyone expects to be able to do with their broadband, this deal won’t do for most users. “Fast” Broadband is the somewhat misleading name of TalkTalk’s basic broadband package. If, however, you don't live in an area where you can access faster internet connection options, it may do you just fine. Here’s a summary of the deal:

You have three broadband contract length options but how much you pay will depend on the length you choose. The 18-month deal currently provides the best value for money, coming in at over £5 a month cheaper than the others. However, this may not last long since TalkTalk changes broadband deals regularly. In fact, last time we checked, it was 24-month contract that was heavily discounted. Either way, here are all the features that all these contract lengths share:

• Fixed prices for the length of your contract
• Line rental included
• Unlimited usage
• TalkTalk HomeSafe web filter included
• TalkTalk Super Router included

No broadband-only deals with TalkTalkIf you’re looking for broadband without line rental, TalkTalk isn’t the broadband provider for you. All of its broadband deals include line rental as standard and require an active line to get you connected. You’re not obliged to actually plug a phone in, though, if you prefer to do without it altogether.

TalkTalk Fibre Broadband Deals

The next step up in terms of speed is TalkTalk Fibre Broadband is offered at three speed tiers. There are currently some TalkTalk internet deals that let you have higher internet connection speeds for the same price or less than the standard TalkTalk Fast Broadband deal above.

TalkTalk Fibre 35

If you need internet with a bit more oomph than standard broadband - there aren’t that many of you, let’s say, but you are going to be streaming videos and expect decent speeds when a couple of devices are connected - you may be more suited to TalkTalk’s Fibre 35 deal. Like all of the rest of TalkTalk’s deals, it uses fibre optic cables to transmit data instead of old phone lines, meaning it works more than three times faster. Here’s what it would set you back:

This entry-level deal in TalkTalk's fibre roster beats the Fast Broadband plan, saving you £2.50 a month for faster internet. This is the case if you pick the 18-month contract iteration of the TalkTalk deals. While the 12 and 24-month deals are more expensive, they still manage to be 5p cheaper than their Fast Broadband counterparts. Let's take a look at all the features of the TalkTalk Fibre 35 deal:

• Fixed prices for the length of your contract
• 30-day great connection guarantee
• Line rental included
• Unlimited usage
• HomeSafe web filter included
• SuperSafe security
• TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub Black is included

TalkTalk’s 30-day great connection guarantee is a promise that if you decide within the first 30 days that you’re not happy with your connection, you are free to leave without paying an exit fee. TalkTalk Fibre deals also come with SuperSafe protection, in addition to the HomeSafe web filter.

Can I get TalkTalk broadband in my area?Unless you live in a remote area of the UK, you will normally be able to get a broadband connection, however full fibre broadband access is more limited and is currently primarily available to urban centres and suburbs. Sadly, the deal you pick will greatly depend on your local area availability. You can easily check if fibre is rolled out in your area on the Ofcom website

TalkTalk Fibre 65

Not sure if TalkTalk Fibre 35 will be quite quick enough to match your needs? If it’s available in your area, you should consider upgrading to Fibre 65. With this package, you’ll experience speeds up to six times faster than standard broadband, so even a big household should have no trouble connecting several devices at the same time to stream, game online, and browse. Here’s how much it costs:

Be aware that speeds this fast will not be available to everyone, and depend very much on where you live. You can check the speeds available to you on our dedicated page. If you’re eligible, this is a TalkTalk Fibre deal we can get behind coming only at £2 more a month than slow Fast Broadband option. The rest of its features are the same as those associated with Fibre 35.

Fibre 150

More exclusive but perfect for households that need their broadband to go a little bit further, Faster 150 Fibre offers 145 Mbps downloads and 25 Mbps uploads. Always got a load of devices on the go at once? Are several TVs streaming while others are being used for hardcore online gaming? You can be sure of no annoying lag time or cuts with a package like this:

Fibre 150 is only available on an 18-month contract, which is usually £40 a month but at the time of writing is on special offer. Once your contract is up, you’ll revert to paying £39.95 a month (which, being out of contract, will be subject to change) thereafter. With TalkTalk Fibre, you will need to have an Openreach engineer come to your home for an hour or two in order to get you set up with your new connection. It's worth noting that an appointment is booked upon sign up though you do have up to up to 48 hours to change it.

TalkTalk Homeworker Package

Due to an increasing portion of the UK workforce taking advantage of the option to work from home, TalkTalk is offering a second fibre broadband line so that you can separate work-related internet traffic from regular home entertainment traffic. This approach should help with connection reliability, especially when it comes to videoconferencing and communication on platforms like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. Let's take a look at pricing and features:

It's worth keeping in mind that this deal isn't for a primary home internet connection. At the same time, this isn't fully-fledged business broadband. Instead it's a supplemental and dedicated connection for those who are teleworking or telecommuting. Here are the main points to take into account when looking at this 24-month plan:

• Second dedicated connection for business use only
• 30-day great connection guarantee
• Line rental included
• Unlimited usage
• No set up fee
• Worksafe security included
• 7 day a week UK support available

UltraFibreOptic Broadband

If you’re lucky enough that your home falls within the parts of York where TalkTalk Fibre has developed its own hyperfast network, you could be eligible for a deal on broadband speeds of over 900 Mbps. Ultra Fibre Optic (or UFO) broadband is for those who want no limits on bandwidth and want to wait not one millisecond for their internet to catch up with them. Coming in at 16 times the speed of basic fibre broadband, here’s what it would set you back:

Its 18-month deal is among TalkTalk’s cheapest fibre deals, as well as being by far its fastest. There are definitely perks to living in an area where this is available! However, you should bear in mind that the monthly price of UltraFibreOptic does creep up to £36 per month once the contract period you signed up for comes to an end. To see the availability map for UFO fibre broadband, go to the TalkTalk website.

More perks with UFO Fibre BroadbandApart from the series of features included with all TalkTalk fibre deals, UFO Broadband customers signed up to the 18-month deal also receive TalkTalk TV as standard and can add the Unlimited UK Call Boost for free for the duration of their contract.

What about TalkTalk TV packages?Find out more about TalkTalk TV and streaming packages by going directly to our dedicated TalkTalk TV page.

Is TalkTalk broadband any good?

We’ve taken you through just about everything you’ll need to know about TalkTalk broadband, but one important thing remains - what do customers think about it? We wouldn’t dream of entering into a contract without knowing a company’s track record with customers, and neither should you, so we’ve scoured the internet to find out just what people are saying about TalkTalk.

What we found was a mixed bag. According to Trustpilot, a customer review website, as many people are delighted with TalkTalk’s service as are those frustrated with it. More than a third (36%) of the site’s reviewers give TalkTalk Broadband the best rating of 5 stars, while another 38% give the worst rating of 1 star. So what’s going on? Let’s take a look:

Talk Talk customer services have not got a clue. I have never received such bad services from a company, and that's when you eventually get through.

Most of the bad reviews seem to stem, like the above one, from poor customer service rather than broadband service itself - not that this is particularly encouraging, as everyone has to contact their provider for help at some point. There are also some customers having issues with their broadband service, with broadband cutting out and complaints of lower than advertised speeds, but these seem to be more of a minority.

How much is TalkTalk broadband?

The cheapest TalkTalk broadband deal currently comes in at £22 per month for an 18 month contract on their Fibre 35 plan. The most expensive TalkTalk broadband contract is actually its slowest one, Fast Broadband, clocking in at £29.95 per month if you decide to for either the 12 or 24-month contract length. However, the dearest monthly payment is for the Fibre 150 plan but only if you stick with the service once the contract and its preferential pricing is over. If that's the case then you'll be forking over £39.95 per month which is even more expensive than UltraFibreOptic's contract price.

Can I get TalkTalk broadband in my area?

Whether Talktalk broadband or fibre is available in your area entirely depends on the state of the telecoms infrastructure in the vicinity of your home. Certain Talktalk broadband deals will require access to the Openreach network which is currently being rolled out throughout the UK, meaning that your area may not be being served quite just yet. In any case, you can easily check availability by entering your postcode on TalkTalk or Ofcom websites.

What speeds can I get with TalkTalk broadband?

TalkTalk broadband has a wide range of speeds, on both sides of the UK connection speed average of around 50Mbps. The slowest broadband plan is ironically called Fast Broadband and is able to reach speeds of 11Mbps. For only a few more pounds a month and having access to the right sort of connection, TalkTalk broadband customers can opt for the fastest speeds afforded by their UltraFibreOptic contract which can reach up to 900Mbps

All the broadband speeds quoted by TalkTalk are measured during a daily peak time and are based on the speeds experienced by at least half of their broadband customer base during that time.

Pros and cons

So here’s what seem to us to be the pros and cons of signing up to TalkTalk Broadband:

TalkTalk Router

Like most major providers, TalkTalk offers a series of its own routers to customers, and certain hubs can come included in certain deals. Not only do they often come free, but providers often recommend that you use their own routers because they are configured to have enhanced compatibility with their service. We suspect that they are easier to set up with the given provider, in this case TalkTalk.

TalkTalk, in fact, has two routers - the first of which is called the TalkTalk Super router. It’s designed to accompany a basic 11 Mbps broadband deal. Here are its features:

• Dual-band technology which lets it switch between two frequencies and avoid wireless interference.
• Simple setup - plug it in, wait for the connection to set up automatically, then you’re good to go. Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) also allows you to connect securely to your device with the push of a button.
• The Super Router regularly conducts smart software updates to improve the performance of your Wi-Fi.

The Super Router comes as standard with TalkTalk’s Fast Broadband, while TalkTalk’s fibre deals come with TalkTalk’s Wi-Fi Hub, Wi-Fi Hub Black and Award-winning Wi-Fi Hub routers. These Wi-Fi Hub routers, TalkTalk claims, offer the “strongest, fastest, most reliable Wi-Fi signal ever”. Depending on the Fibre option you've chosen, they will come as standard, from Fibre 35 right through to UFO Fibre Broadband. Here’s everything you need to know about it:

• Simple setup - plug it in, switch it on, and you’re ready to go.
• Breaks through background interference and pinpoint your devices to keep you connected in all parts of your home.
• Smart feature learns which devices you’re using and where, tailoring the speeds it sends to each device depending on their needs.
• One steady status light to let you know if there’s a problem while keeping things simple.
• Removable Wi-Fi settings card with the network name and password, making it easy for you to get at the details when you need to.

My TalkTalk app

To help manage your TalkTalk account more easily, the My TalkTalk app is available in the App Store and Google Play Store. Through the app, you can:

• Pay your most recent bill.
• View bills from the past 12 months.
• View your usage (can be used for broadband, TV and mobile).
• Contact TalkTalk’s customer service team via App Messenger.
• Solve issues yourself via the Help section, FAQs and the Community forums.

This sounds great. Unfortunately, however, the success with which the app carries out these functions is put slightly into question by its ratings for iOS and Android. In the App Store, almost 400 users gave it a lousy average of 1.6 out of 5 stars, with one user describing it as “quite possibly the worst app ever made.”

Google Play Store users aren’t much kinder, with over 6,000 users giving it an average of 2 out of 5 stars. The problems they cite are similar to those experienced by Apple users, and one user gives a definitive summary which seems to speak for the majority:

It's a simple app, should work perfectly, but it's full of bugs and poorly designed.

Put simply, the app needs work, and at the moment offers little respite to (as we’re about to discover) overstrained customer service advisers. This is definitely one area TalkTalk needs to make a lot of improvements in.

TalkTalk Broadband contact

Looking to get in touch with TalkTalk about broadband? You’ll find all the contact information you need on our TalkTalk contact page. We won’t go through all the departments here, so if you’re an existing customer with an issue, a business broadband customer, or have a different issue to resolve, go straight there and you’ll be guided through every channel. If you’re just looking to talk to someone about joining TalkTalk, however, here’s the number to call:

TalkTalk Broadband sales contact0800 049 1375 *Monday to Sunday: 8am-8pm

If you don’t want to go through it over the phone, TalkTalk offers a live chat service on its website where you can ask an agent any questions you may have. You can then also buy online to avoid being put on hold and wasting your own time.

And if you're looking to terminate your service, be sure to check out our guide How to Cancel TalkTalk.