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TalkTalk goes silent

Integrated services, integrated failure

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TalkTalk, the Lidl of telephony providers, has suffered a catastrophic network failure that has taken down its website and disrupted voice calls for customers.

The company's sites are currently displaying an apology, and stating that while voice services were disrupted they are now back up and running, so calls should be working fine.

We've had no reports of interrupted broadband internet access, but the online accounts and customer service sites aren't available and the press office is defaulting to answerphone.

TalkTalk used to be owned by Carphone Warehouse, but now stands alone following the binary fission of its parent. ®

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"Lidl of telephony providers"

Can I be the 1057th commentard to complain it's grossly unfair to compare a fine supermarket to this shower of kronk.

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1

Stop taking the piss out of Lidl

They may be cheap in monetary terms, but the products are as good, and sometimes better, than any other supermarket round here (Morrisons, CO-OP and Waitrose).

Yeah TT are carp, but how about BT?? They have just spent 4 days insisting there was nothing wrong with my phone line, before an engineer finally admitted the DSL equipment at the exchange had failed, FOR THE SECOND TIME IN 6 MONTHS!

(Borrowed the loud hailer from my local Lib-Dem, he wont be needing it any more)

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@Steve Davies 3

1. TalkTalk cannot maintain the equipment in the BT Green cabinet. This is a BT cabinet, maintained by BT Openreach (A BT Group Company). BT would not call TT and ask them to fix a fault in their own equipment.

2. The "TT Service Engineer" you talk of is in actual fact a BT Openreach engineer. TalkTalk/Sky/BE etc do not send their own engineers to work on Openreach's equipment. The ISP's pay Openreach to do the work. And in some cases Openreach make mistakes. So it was a BT Openreach engineer who "Out of the kindness of his heart" fixed the mistake of another BT Openreach engineer who didnt care about "how many BT, TT, Tiscali and other customers he was disconnecting at the same time".

Openreach are the ones who maintain the last mile (from the exchange to the NTE). If there was a problem from the TT quipment in the exchange to their network then yes it is for TT to fix, but if the fault is between the exchange and the NTE then it is for BT Openreach.

I'm not defending TalkTalk, but I tire of seeing ISP's take the hit for BT Openreach's incompetence. I would recommend your anger is directed a BT Openreach for being unable to maintain their own network effectively.

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