italk broadband review 2025: Is it any good?
Dan Howdle • August 11th, 2025
It may not be the biggest name in the broadband market but Hove-based italk 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
| Average download speed | 10Mbps, 40Mbps, 63Mbps, 80Mbps, 115Mbps, 300Mbps, 550Mbps, 900Mbps |
|---|---|
| Broadband | ADSL, Standard Fibre, Full Fibre |
| Home Phone | Yes |
| Digital TV | No |
| Contract length | 18 months |
| Prices from | £21.99 per month |
Broadband speeds
Italk still offers ADSL (quite rare now), and offers two Standard Fibre packages, along with fie Full Fibre optionss – its ADSL and Standard Fibre speeds are roughly the same as those offered by pretty much every other UK broadband provider, except for Virgin Media. As indeed is the case with its Full Fibre packages, give or take a few Mbps here or there.
Whether you can get those Full Fibre packages will depend on where you live, with around one in three households able to get it. italk used to offer only offers speeds up to 220Mbps until fairly recently. That's no longer the case, with italk now matching other national providers with similar speeds up to 900Mbps at the top end.
All italk contracts are on 18 month contracts as standard, which is a welcome aspect of its offering, since most providers are offering 24 month contracts these days, and we still feel those are too long.
The uperfast Fibre packages are italk's Standard Fibre offerings, but in terms of the speeds promised those will vary depending on where you live. Another recent improvement is it is now much clearer the speed you're going to be getting at each package level. We applaud this as things used to be rather confusing in its line-up. italk no longer gives speed ranges in place of an average, which while more honest, didn't help very much figuring out which package to choose.
For some reason, italk still names its packages with numbers that differ from the speeds you're going to get, though. For example, Superfast Fibre 100, offers an average of 63Mbps, and Fibre 50 offers 40Mbps average. More consistent naming would be both more consistent and more honest, especially since these package names overstate, not understate, the speeds you're actually likely to get.
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 broadband packages now include a free Zyxel router, with the model supplied depending on the package type. Current information indicates that both Standard Fibre and Full Fibre packages come with a dual-band Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) router. This model offers both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless bands, four Ethernet ports for wired connections, and support for mesh networking to extend coverage if required. While some promotional material in the past referred to different models for Standard and Full Fibre packages, the latest details suggest the same specification is used across the entire 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
Italk has addressed a lot of our previous concerns across the past several months and deserves its upgraded score, shooting up from a lowly two stars to four stars out of five. Its broadband offering can now comfortably be described as very good, with less confusing packages, much higher speeds and an easy to understand equipment offering. It also continues to excel in customer service.
italk's addressed its confusing. overlapping speeds that seemed pointless to the layperson who may not know they use differing technologies, nor if and how that matters. Its package naming convention is still a bit dishonest, with the speeds you get lower than the names of those packages suggest. However, italk has gone to lengths to ensure the speed you're going to get is writ large on the package information, so it feels more awkward than subterfuge now.
It has also lowered the required contract length from 24 months to 18 months, something we also applaud, and to our mind almost a reason to recommend italk in and of itself. Well done italk, it's clear you're really trying to improve. We now have no hesitation in recommending italk to anyone considering a new broadband package.
