Talk Home Review

Table of Contents Plans Value for money Extras and benefits Network Which network does Spusu use? Coverage Speeds Frequencies Customer Service Conclusion Alternatives

Plans

Talk Home offers both SIM Only plans and a Pay As You Go service, but you can’t buy phones from this network.

Talk Home Plans

	Mobile phones	SIM Only
Plans Available	X	✔
Max Data Allowance	X	200GB
Contract Length	X	30 days, or 12-months

Talk Home offers a selection of SIM Only deals that you can get on a 30-day rolling plan, along with 12-month options which include more data for the money.

All of Talk Home’s plans include 5G, plus unlimited minutes and texts, though data tops out at 200GB, so there’s no unlimited data option here. Talk Home also promises there won’t be any price hikes during 2024, so you can be safe in the knowledge that the price of your plan won’t change this year.

You can also get special international calling plans on Talk Home, which don’t tie you into a contract and provide minutes to either a specific country or a selection of destinations.

And there’s a Pay As You Go service on Talk Home too, with a selection of plans available or impressively cheap standard rates of 1p per minute, 1p per text, and 1p per megabyte of data.

Value for money

SIM Only Deals

View All Talk Home Sim Only Deals

How good value for money Talk Home is will depend largely on the plan – and plan type – you choose.

Its Pay As You Go service is superb value, with rates of 1p per minute, text, or megabyte. That’s a match for 1pMobile and cheaper than just about every other network.

On SIM Only, its pricing is more variable, with for example its 200GB 30-day plan seeming a little steep at £35 per month, but its 120GB 12-month plan seeming more reasonable at £15 per month.

Extras and benefits

The chart below provides an overview of Talk Home’s key perks and policies, but you’ll find full details of those things further down.

Talk Home Perks and Policies

5G	✔
Free Roaming	✔ (in EU)
Tethering	✔
Wi-Fi Calling	✖
VoLTE	✖
Data Rollover	✖
Spending Caps	✖
Unlimited Data	✖
Family Plans	✖
Credit Check	✖

5G

Talk Home provides 5G as standard on all of its plans, so as long as you have a 5G phone, you’ll be able to access to highest speeds of mobile data.

Roaming Destinations

Talk Home allows customers to roam across over 45 EU destinations at no extra cost. The included countries are as follows:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Guiana, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Martinique, Mayotte, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Reunion, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine.

Unusually, there’s no fair usage limit when roaming in these destinations, so you can use your allowances in full, just as you would at home.

Tethering

Talk Home’s plans include tethering at no extra cost, with no restrictions other than your standard data limit.

Wi-Fi Calling

Wi-Fi Calling isn’t offered by Talk Home, which is a shame as this would allow you to seamlessly call and text over Wi-Fi, which is handy when there’s no mobile signal.

VoLTE

VoLTE (standing for Voice over LTE) also isn’t offered by Talk Home. This service – which is sometimes called 4G Calling – allows you to use a 4G network to call and text, so it can be handy when there’s no 3G or 2G available.

Data rollover

Data rollover isn’t offered by Talk Home, so you can’t roll over your unused data to a second month.

Spending caps

Talk Home doesn’t offer spending caps as such, but you can’t spend outside your general allowances without buying an add-on or manually adding credit to your account, so you won’t get hit with any unexpected charges, you just can’t tailor a cap to your needs.

Unlimited data

Talk Home doesn’t offer any plans with unlimited data, though you can get up to 200GB per month, which should be more than enough for most users. Still, with unlimited data being an increasingly common option, its absence here is unfortunate.

Family plans

You can’t get a family plan on Talk Home, so there aren’t any discounts or perks for having multiple plans on your account.

Credit checks

Talk Home won’t credit check you for any of its plans. The wording on the network’s site is a bit ambiguous, saying that “free PAYG SIM” cards aren’t credit checked, but a customer service agent assured us that there’s no credit checks for any Talk Home plan at the time of writing.

Unique perks

Talk Home has a few perks, including plans designed specifically for international calls. So if that’s a focus for you, these are worth checking out.

Beyond that, the network also won’t raise your prices throughout 2024, and it has extremely low Pay As You Go rates. It’s also unusual in having no fair usage limits when roaming.

Network

Which network does Talk Home use?

Talk Home is an EE MVNO, so its coverage and speeds should be identical.

Coverage

As you can see in the chart below, Talk Home has extensive 5G coverage and almost comprehensive 4G coverage.

Talk Home Coverage

Network Type	Coverage by population
5G	Now available in over 1,000 locations
4G	>99%
3G	98% (switching off in 2024)
2G	99%

Check Talk Home Coverage

Network speeds

Opensignal – Mobile Network Experience, September 2023, and April 2020

Network	Download/upload speeds	4G latency (ms)
Talk Home (EE)	40.0/9.3Mbps	36.0ms
Three	34.5/6.3Mbps	48.3ms
Vodafone	27.9/8.0Mbps	39.0ms
O2	20.9/5.0Mbps	38.1ms

Since Talk Home’s speeds should be similar to EE’s, we can look at studies that have been done on EE to get a picture of what to expect from Talk Home.

First up then, there’s a September 2023 Opensignal report, which put EE’s average download speed at 40.0Mbps, and its average upload speed at 9.3Mbps. That’s using a mix of 5G, 4G, and 3G connections, with the idea being that this reflects real world use – though note that EE is in the process of switching off its 3G network.

An earlier report from 2020 also included average latency, with EE’s being 36.0ms. Both the speed and latency results in these reports were better for EE than for Three, Vodafone or O2.

When looking just at 5G, the same 2023 report from Opensignal put EE’s average 5G download speed at 99.5Mbps, which isn’t particularly special. But a RootMetrics report from the second half of 2023 put EE’s median 5G download speed at a more impressive 174.1Mbps.

And a Speedtest report from the second half of 2023 found EE’s median 5G latency to be 30ms. So all of this should broadly apply to Talk Home as well.

Traffic management

On the subject of traffic management, all Talk Home says is that “During busy periods on our network, we may need to manage traffic to ensure everyone has access to our services.” So outside of that you shouldn’t experience any throttling or other traffic management systems.

Network Frequencies

Talk Home Network Frequencies

Frequency	Frequency Band	Network
700Mhz	N29	5G
800MHz	Band 20	4G
1800MHz	Band 3	2G & 4G
2100MHz	Band 1	3G & 4G
2600MHz	Band 7	4G
3400MHz	N78	5G
3600MHz	N77	5G

Talk Home uses EE’s frequencies, meaning that it should have access to those in the chart above.

Specifically then, Talk Home would be using the 800MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz, and 2600MHz bands for 4G, and the 700MHz, 3400MHz, and 3600MHz bands for 5G.

The main difference between these bands is that lower frequency ones (such as 700MHz) are good at travelling over long distances and passing through obstacles such as walls, while higher frequency ones are better in busy places, as there’s more capacity available on these.

For more information on all of these bands and others, check out our 4G and 5G frequencies guide.

Customer Service

There haven’t been any studies done on Talk Home’s customer service, but Talk Home has a Trustpilot rating of 3.4 out of five, which suggests that users have mixed or middling views of the experience on the network.

Conclusion

Talk Home has a few notable things going for it, including strong coverage and speeds from EE, no fair usage limits when roaming, very low standard rates, and no credit checks, as well as the option of buying plans focused on international calling.

However, the network is lacking in other areas, with no unlimited data option, no Wi-Fi Calling, and no VoLTE. It’s also not the network for you if you want to buy a smartphone on contract.

Overall then Talk Home is a mixed bag. If you don’t need the things it lacks then it could be a strong choice – particularly on Pay As You Go, but for some users it will likely be just too basic.

Alternatives

EE is an obvious alternative to Talk Home, since Talk Home shares EE’s coverage. You’ll typically pay more on EE, but the network sells a wealth of different plans and has far more extras than Talk Home.

You might also consider 1pMobile, as this also shares EE’s coverage, and is similarly cheap on Pay As You Go. This network isn’t quite as good for international calling, but it does offer Wi-Fi Calling and VoLTE, which Talk Home lacks.

If international calling is your focus though then you might also consider Lyca Mobile or Lebara, which are arguably the two best networks for international calling.