italk Telecom broadband review 2024: Is it any good?

Dan Howdle • July 29th, 2024

It may not be the biggest name in the broadband market but Hove-based italk Telecom has been around for more than a decade and prides itself on offering UK-based support to its broadband and phone customers. You won't find anything out of the ordinary with italk, but it's definitely going to be worth finding out about its solid-enough offering.

So if you’re looking beyond the likes of BT, Sky and Virgin Media in your search for a new broadband deal, what does italk Telecom have to offer?

Overview

Broadband speeds

italk Telecom offers a standard broadband package, two fibre options, and three three full fibre options – its standard and fibre speeds are roughly the same as those offered by pretty much every other UK broadband provider, except for Virgin Media. italk Broadband veers off however by offering full fibre packages of 40Mbps, 80Mbps and 220Mbps in addition, making its overall offering somewhat confusing at first glance.

Whether you can get those full fibre packages will depend on where you live, with around one in three households able to get it. The confusing part is italk only offers speeds up to 220Mbps where almost all other providers that offer Full Fibre offer up to 900Mbps, with a handful of them now offering 1,600Mbps (1.6Gbps). We certainly understand narrowing the range of speeds available both to keep things straightforward and and to offer its broadband more cheaply, but italk appears to have achieved neither.

All italk Telecom contracts are for 24 months as standard, but the provider does primise no price rises across the length of that contract, which although long, does make them rather more attractive.

Simply Broadband is iTalk Telecom’s standard ADSL package. It is described as perfect for the 'casual internet user on a budget'. It offers average download speeds of 10Mbps with a guaranteed 3Mbps. This is enough to do the basics online including internet banking, shopping and watching Netflix (just about). But we don't believe it's enough for most households, and equally we don't believe £28.99 for speeds this slow is particularly 'budget' compared to ADSL from other providers. You won't be offered this if you can get anything faster.

The Fast Fibre and Superfast Fibre packages are italk's standard fibre offerings, but in terms of the speeds promised those will vary depending on where you live. In italk's seemingly enthusiastic desire to keep things as confusing as possible, various speeds will be shown if you can get them, and mixed in with Full Fibre if you can get that. italk also gives speed ranges now rather than an average, which may be more honest, but it doesn't help very much figuring out which package to choose.

When it comes to the three full fibre packages: Full Fibre 50, Full Fibre 100, and Full Fibre 250, the latter two offer a speed advantage over the standard fibre packages. But we're not a fan of this sort of naming convention, because the actual speeds of these packages are substantially slower than those numbers, at 40Mbps, 80Mbps and 220Mbps respectively.

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Installation

italk Telecom says it’ll take two or three weeks to get your broadband up and running once you’ve placed your order. You’ll get an email and a text message telling you your activation date.

iTalk doesn’t have its own network or infrastructure, so it relies on your current provider already being connected by BT Openreach. You then switch provider from your current one over to italk with no extra work needing to be done in terms of drilling holes in your walls to feed in a new internet box.

The notable exception is Virgin Media – it runs on its own network – so if you’re leaving Virgin you will have to sever the ties yourself.

You’ll be sent your router before your installation date. You don’t pay for the router itself, just for post and packing. You can then simply plug it in and you're off.

Router

All italk Telecom’s broadband packages come with a free router worth £99 or £159, depending on whether your chosen package is Full Fibre or not. Judging by forums, the lower-value model appears to be a fairly basic, single band ZyXEL model with 802.11n wireless capability and space for multiple ethernet cables in case you want to plug your devices into the router directly. The most advanced router, supplied with Full Fibre packages, however, is Wi-Fi 6 enabled and compatible with a mesh wifi system to enhance its range.

Reliability

As with any provider, the broadband service you receive will depend on a number of things, including how far you live from your nearest exchange or street cabinet and where you position your router.

It also depends on how your phone line is managed both by Openreach, which is responsible for the exchange, the street cabinet and the actual wires in the ground, and italk Telecom itself.

Unlike an increasing number of its rivals, italk Telecom does engage in a process known as traffic management. This means it gives priority to certain online activities during peak times. In its terms and conditions, italk says web browsing and email are given priority over file sharing and streaming, so you may experience buffering on Netflix if you’re watching at the same time as a lot of other folk (peak times tend to be between 4pm and 8pm).

Customer service

iTalk Telecom has an impressive score of 4.5 out of 5 on Trustpilot although, as with all telecoms providers, there are negative user reviews out there if you want to find them.

In terms of customer support, iTalk has its own UK-based call centre, while you can also choose to get in touch via email, which isn’t the case for all providers.

Conclusion

There’s always an element of risk in going for a small provider rather than one of the more established players in the market. They sometimes fail, and sometimes sell the business to one of the larger national providers. italk's been around for long enough now to be fairly certain that probably won't happen.

italk's offering isn't simple though, with lots of overlapping speeds that seem pointless to the layperson who may not know they use differing technologies, nor if and how that matters. Its package naming convention is a bit dishonest, with the speeds you get lower than the names of those packages suggest. And the router offered by italk on its basic fibre packages is very basic – the sort you'd expect from a very budget provider and yet its packages are anything but budget, with 220Mbps coming in at a hefty £50 a month at the time of writing compared to £50 per month for 1130Mbps from Virgin Media. italk isn't just 'not budget', it's actually quite expensive.

While the thought of being tied into a two-year contract will be off-putting to some, there aren’t many providers guaranteeing no price hikes for the length of your contract, so there is that. But beyond that we are really struggling for a reason to recommend italk over one of the larger incumbents.

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