Carphone Warehouse reveals "free" broadband details - it's war!

[Bob Crabtree]

Carphone Warehouse subsidiary Talk Talk yesterday revealed details about its hotly anticipated "free" broadband internet service, setting off widespread - and probably justified - talk of a broadband and telecoms price war.

Somewhat surprisingly, the service - which goes live at the beginning in July but is available to sign-up to right now - really is free, apart from a £29.99 connection charge that also covers the cost of a USB ADSL modem.

The deal is said to offer download speeds of up to 8Megabits per second along with 15MB of web storage, five email addresses and a monthly download limit of 40GB that's governed by Talk Talk's " fair-usage policy".

There is, of course, one significant gotcha (ain't there always?) - the service is only free for subscribers to Talk Talk's landline phone service, Talk 3 International. And that will cost £20.99 per month - £9.99 for a subscription and £11 for line rental - and involve a minimum 18-month contract.

On the plus side, the bulk of phone calls for many subscribers will be free, whether to the UK or abroad.

Full details in this HEXUS.headline.

[nichomach]

The fair-usage policy is said to restrict "high bandwidth activity in peak hours to allow the majority of customers to use their broadband connection for normal residential usage". In that list, Talk Talk includes surfing, email and online gaming but not excessive use of peer-to-peer file-sharing. And, presumably, the download speeds available during peak hours - defined, rather perversely, as 8am to midnight - are going to be considerably less than the headline figure of 8Mbps...

...Peer-to-peer activity will be restricted in peak hours but the company says, without explaining how, that it will allow "a greater proportion of P2P traffic" between midnight and 8am.

So, basically, you can do as much P2P as you want between midnight and 8am, just don't do it in the hours when the majority of users are trying to surf, pick up email or game. The how isn't rocket science; it's perfectly possible to implement bandwidth prioritisation between certain times. Seems fair enough to me; most domestic broadband is still on about a 50:1 contention ratio, which if the 50 are just gaming, surfing or handling mail is fine. That contention ratio really only starts to bite when a few people use a lot of bandwidth continuously.

I doubt that any provider currently is going to guarantee 8mbps speeds continuously, but it's probable that TalkTalk won't be any worse than any other provider in this area - we can always hit AdslGuide to see what their speeds and QoS look like.

I think it IS a little unfair to describe the hours that they earmark as peak time for the purposes of bandwidth prioritisation as "perverse"; they've chosen the times that the majority of their clientele are likely to be awake and using their service actively, as opposed to kicking off a huge P2P download and leaving it running for however long.

However you cut it, this is a very cheap service that if implemented properly could make broadband very, very affordable for masses of users; the only people who'd get bitten are those who do masses of P2P and insist on doing it throughout the day. Bluntly, ALL the cheap ISPs do bandwidth management, they ALL have "fair use" policies like this, and they'd ALL be inappropriate for a high bandwidth user. Frankly, that sort of user would receive a more appropriate service by paying more elsewhere, and I don't see what's wrong with that.

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

This is the UK finally getting caught up in the home telecomms market compared to the rest of the world.

[Workaholic]

I like this part of the conditions:

Free landline calls

The landline phone side of the Talk3 International service will look rather appealing to anyone who spends a lot time on the phone, especially if they regularly call abroad. Day or night, Talk3 International will offer an unlimited number of 70-minute calls free to UK landlines with numbers starting 01 and 02 and to landlines in 28 countries. And yes, it is okay to hang up and ring again to get another free call to the same number. Calls are not free to numbers beginning with 0845, 0870 or 0840, nor to premium-rate lines.

Too bad, mobiles and premium customer service numbers aren't included....