Best VPNs for TalkTalk

Throttling and blocking

TalkTalk does have a history of throttling internet speeds and it used to be common to experience slower downloads thanks to its traffic management policy. That changed in 2013 when, mostly to catch up with competitor Sky Broadband, TalkTalk announced that it would offer unlimited broadband and its previous policies were to be scrapped. TalkTalk does still have a version of traffic management but this is simply to prioritize video streaming. Regardless, some customers have alleged that TalkTalk deliberately slows down customer speeds so that they are forced to upgrade, but it’s more likely that is just the result of the company’s slow internet speeds which still lag behind other ISPs in the UK.

Although TalkTalk no longer throttles, blocking is still an issue, however most of this is forced upon the company by court orders. This means many P2P and torrenting websites are blocked although more recently these court orders have been targeting live streaming websites instead. This obviously has a big effect on customers using Kodi or IPTV who may frequently find channels disappearing.

Besides blocking the websites that are out of TalkTalk’s control, there have been incidents in the past of websites being blocked accidentally. TeamViewer, WordPress, and Imgur are some of the notable names to be temporarily disabled due to them being flagged by the Internet Watch Foundation.

Using a VPN With TalkTalk

It’s a good idea to use a VPN with TalkTalk because despite having corrected its throttling issues, it still can’t do anything about the UK’s internet censorship. So, if you want to access a website or a stream that has been blocked by TalkTalk or the courts then you’ll need to use a VPN.

Although officially TalkTalk does support VPN access, many TalkTalk customers have had issues connecting to their VPN while using the service. Specifically, there have been problems recorded with the D-LINK DSL3782 router and TalkTalk’s “super router” HG633 made by Huawei. TalkTalk says the issues have been fixed with firmware updates but problems still remain for some users. TalkTalk’s solution to this problem seems to be to simply send out more routers which tells you all you need to know about the router quality. Some VPNs, like SaferVPN, do offer user guides on how to set up a VPN on a Huawei router.

Recommended VPN services

SaferVPN