@Stupot1 ,
I'm guessing that an Openreach Engineer was arranged, who in turn found the Modem/Router to be faulty, resulting in Openreach charging TalkTalk for the visit.
I obviously have no idea what happened when you reported the fault to TalkTalk but you may have had a better experience if you had come to this forum, as I have seen staff frequently send a new router to customers for testing purposes to rule that out in the first instance, assuming tests their end don't flag up any potential problems with the line.
I'm not sure what you mean by "upgrade their outdated equipment". They will replace a router if it goes faulty or if you upgrade to a broadband service which requires a different router but they won't routinely replace perfectly good ones just in case they goes faulty at some point - That would just increase the cost of the service for everyone.
There is always the option of buying and using your own router, as many of us do for various reasons. In many years of using broadband, I've never known any of my routers to ever go faulty, and if it does I've still got the ISP's one to use for testing purposes and for use as an emergency short term spare.
TalkTalk, as you have found, use various overseas call centres, and the quality of service can vary wildly. The main reason for doing this, I would imagine, is cost. They are, at the end of the day, a budget ISP. If you want to go with a premium ISP who use only UK call centres and pay a premium price for the privilege, that is your choice to make.
