TalkTalk
Encyclopedia
TalkTalk is a pay television, telecommunication
s and internet service provider
company headquartered in London
, United Kingdom
. It was founded in 2003 as a subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse plc
and was demerged as a standalone company in March 2010.
Originally solely a fixed landline provider, TalkTalk now operates and sells broadband, home phone and mobile packages to UK customers under the TalkTalk and AOL Broadband
brands. The company also provides services to business customers under the TalkTalk Business
brand. Like some other UK broadband providers on the ADSL network, TalkTalk has invested in its own exchange infrastructure, known as Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), with 72% of its customers base unbundled as of December 2009.
TalkTalk is listed is on the London Stock Exchange
and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index
.
Several high profile TV advertising campaigns commenced in 2003, initially under the first TalkTalk brand utilising the former public face of BT, Maureen Lipman. It appeared that TalkTalk was going head to head with BT with the slogan "It's good to Talk, but it's better to TalkTalk", mocking BT's "It's good to Talk" slogan. In the following years TalkTalk invested heavily in TV advertising and has won several awards for creativity. TalkTalk Broadband was launched in November 2004. The free broadband offer was later launched in April 2006. The company was criticised several times for making exaggerated claims such as "Free Broadband Forever" which later turned out to be misleading.
The acquisitions of the UK operations of Tele2
for £11.5m and One.Tel
for £169.6m culminated in TalkTalk now having 2.5m customers.
The Carphone Warehouse purchased the UK ISP business of AOL
in October 2006 for £370m and renamed it AOL Broadband
.
In June 2009 a £236 million deal to purchase Tiscali UK by The Carphone Warehouse
was approved by the European Union
Competition Commission. The acquisition was completed on 6 July 2009 with the business becoming part of TalkTalk. At the time Carphone Warehouse announced that TalkTalk would be spun out from the group as a separate listed company, with the Tiscali, AOL Broadband and TalkTalk brands all coming together as one brand eventually.
According to the January 2009 financial announcement by Carphone Warehouse plc, TalkTalk had 2.7 million customers. The Carphone Warehouse's full-year earnings statement in November 2009 revealed the TalkTalk customer base had risen to 4.12 million following the purchase of Tiscali UK earlier in the year. TalkTalk was the sponsor of the sixth series of the The X Factor
, which started on 22 August 2009.
TalkTalk announced that a Tiscali UK service centre originally opened for Toucan in Sligo
would be closed in 2010 with the loss of 160 jobs. Some workers from the Sligo centre would be transferred to Waterford while the company is also advertising 60 new positions at Waterford..
In 2011 TalkTalk launched HomeSafe, a network-level online security and website blocking system. The free product is aimed at parents who want to filter web content such as pornography or violence. TalkTalk claims to be the first UK ISP to offer this functionality.
In August 2011, TalkTalk was fined £3 million by the independent telecommunications regulator Ofcom
for incorrectly billing over 65,000 customers between 1 January 2010 and 4 March 2011. The company had been overcharging customers for services that had not been received which resulted in the company paying an additional £2.5 million in refunds. Ofcom warned TalkTalk in November 2010 to rectify their billing problem after 62,000 incorrect bills were issued and were given a deadline which they did not meet. TalkTalk was announced as the most complained about telecommunications company for landline and broadband for 2011 by Ofcom.
, the company maintained a customer service centre in Waterford
until October 2011
, which was originally set up for AOL UK
and provided services for both companies. On 7 September 2011 it was announced by Talk Talk Ireland Ltd. that the Waterford call-centre would cease operations within the next 30 days. It had been speculated in the Irish press that the jobs would later relocate to South-East Asia and the UK. The Government of Ireland and its agencies have criticised how TalkTalk and its subsidiary TalkTalk Ireland Ltd. dealt with the job losses. The TalkTalk call centre closed its doors in Waterford on 7 October 2011, with the loss of over 570 jobs.
Previously, TalkTalk announced that a Tiscali UK service centre originally opened for Toucan in Sligo
would be closed in 2010 with the loss of 160 jobs. Some workers from the Sligo centre would be transferred to Waterford while the company is also advertising 60 new positions at Waterford.
brand are also provided, with some AOL content partnerships available for TalkTalk customers.
Tiscali UK provided telephone and broadband services both bundled and separate until being rebranded on 7 January 2010. On this day the company closed to new business. TalkTalk announced in December 2009 that customers with just broadband services would be encouraged to subscribe to a telephone service or pay an extra £5 monthly charge. The Tiscali portal content moved to the TalkTalk website, while the company name remained Tiscali UK Limited trading as TalkTalk.
on the Vodafone UK network.
service from Tiscali and renamed it TalkTalk TV in January 2010. The service had originally launched in London as Homechoice in 2001. TalkTalk is also a partner in the forthcoming TV venture YouView.
from the UK mobile firm O2. Sponsorship continued until the racism controversy
of Celebrity Big Brother 2007
after which the company retracted its sponsorship agreement.
(changing consumers' residential phone line over to a new provider without their consent). Some cases were linked to instances of mis-selling by sales people on the doorstep or by telephone; other consumers reported that their personal data had been misused after buying mobile telephones from Carphone Warehouse. These sales techniques exploited a loophole in British law which allowed consumers to change telecom service providers more easily. In 2011, it was again accused of the practice of slamming, a fact reported on the BBC Watchdog Television program on Tuesday 24 May 2011.
April 2006
On 11 April 2006, TalkTalk started offering a free broadband service (up to 8 Mbit/s with a 40 GB monthly usage limit) for life to all subscribers to their Talk3 International telephone tariff at £20.99/month. Conditions included signing up to a minimum 18 month contract and a £29.99 connection fee.
July 2006
The Advertising Standards Authority
(ASA) challenged TalkTalk on their free broadband offer.
Soon after this challenge, TalkTalk began to offer free broadband on their cheaper Talk3 tariff. This allowed people to have unlimited telephone calls, broadband and line rental for £19.99 a month. This offer was available to new and existing customers, though broadband was only free for customers connected to a Local loop unbundling
(LLU) exchange. As of July 2006, TalkTalk claimed that free broadband was available to 70% of the UK population. They hope that this figure will increase as British Telecom allow the unbundling of their remaining exchanges. Customers not on an unbundled exchange are charged a monthly fee for broadband access. Many users of TalkTalk Broadband do not experience the full 8 Mbit/s speed, as this depends on the extent to which the user's local exchange has been unbundled, and (as with all ADSL services) the distance from the exchange. Users not on unbundled exchanges get a fixed speed service at 0.5, 1 or 2M and not "up to 8M".
Some experts predicted this might provoke a UK broadband price war.
Shortly following this report, Orange began to offer free broadband to users of their monthly mobile phone contracts, and Sky also began offering a variety of free or very cheap broadband packages to their subscribers.
Due to the unexpectedly high number of customers who signed up to the free broadband service, the launch suffered complaints with regard to a long waiting list to join the broadband programme and many difficulties in contacting TalkTalk customer services. In a Sunday Times interview, Charles Dunstone admitted that Carphone's TalkTalk business was "struggling to cope" with the more than 400,000 customers who signed up for high-speed internet access since the service launched in April. He also compared TalkTalk Broadband to "a little baby who’s waking up every two hours and is disturbing the family and making our lives a nightmare."
September 2006
TalkTalk allowed customers to escape the binding 18-month contract for broadband "if it had failed to keep its service commitments in their case".
October 2006
On the BBC programme Watchdog (3 October 2006), Charles Dunstone stated "I got it wrong. I didn't realise that free broadband was going to have the effect on people it has."
November 2006
To the Mail on Sunday Charles Dunstone stated "In about 20% of customers there is some kind of problem with the phone exchange, the line, or something else. There is no point trying to pretend everything is all right. Our business exploded and we compressed the problems everyone in the industry has had into a few months. It has given customers nightmares and I just can't ignore complaints."
A customer satisfaction poll by uSwitch
places TalkTalk and Orange joint bottom for customer satisfaction.
January 2007
The published figures show that by the third quarter of 2006, 540,000 users had been subscribed to TalkTalk broadband of which 132,000 were (TalkTalk) LLU lines. In the third quarter trading update, the published figure was 413,000 customers unbundled, including 281,000 AOL Broadband customers.
Roger Taylor (CFO) reported that the number of TalkTalk Broadband customers was lower than expected, but was forecasting 700,000 customers on unbundled lines (LLU) by March 2007.
In response to the sign up rate halving, The Carphone Warehouse has introduced a free 30 day trial for broadband customers. Charles Dunstone told staff this week that the free trial was "an attempt to give people the confidence to try it, despite what they might have heard". Customers will be able to cancel the contract within 30 days without incurring a penalty.
) with the former spyware
company Phorm
to intercept and analyse their users' click-stream data
, and sell the anonymised aggregate information as part of Phorm's OIX advertising service. At the time, TalkTalk confirmed that the new Phorm system, when implemented, would be a strictly opt-in service. In July 2009, Charles Dunstone, CEO of TalkTalk Group announced that TalkTalk had withdrawn plans to introduce Phorm, along with a similar announcement from BT in the same week.
TalkTalk now use EDEH (Enhanced DNS Error Handling) which suggests sites if the entered URL does not exist and UEI (Usage Exchange Initiative) which exchanges their customers' anonymised usage data with a third party for market research purposes. These settings are defaulted to Opt-in to allow TalkTalk to force these "services" onto the user, but can be set to Opt-out. The settings are found in your Manage My Account / Personal details section of your account.
in 2010, TalkTalk was found to have average speeds of 7.7-9.3 Mbit/sec
reported that TalkTalk had begun harvesting URLs accessed by TalkTalk customers as part of a new anti-malware system it is developing in conjunction with Huawei
, the manufacturer of its network servers. When a user accesses a web page, the URL is harvested and the servers issue the same URL request with the intention of checking the site for malicious code. TalkTalk claims that no personally identifiable information is being harvested however, like Phorm
, some users argue there are some potential legal issues with this harvesting of information. Under relevant UK legislation, URLs are deemed communications content and interception without permission is prohibited.
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
s and internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
company headquartered in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. It was founded in 2003 as a subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse plc
The Carphone Warehouse
Carphone Warehouse Group PLC , known as The Carphone Warehouse, is Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer, with over 1,700 stores across Europe. It is based in the United Kingdom and is a 50% subsidiary of Best Buy...
and was demerged as a standalone company in March 2010.
Originally solely a fixed landline provider, TalkTalk now operates and sells broadband, home phone and mobile packages to UK customers under the TalkTalk and AOL Broadband
AOL Broadband
- History :The UK ISP side of AOL was bought by The Carphone Warehouse in October 2006 for $688m to take advantage of their 100,000 LLU customers which made The Carphone Warehouse the biggest LLU provider in the UK....
brands. The company also provides services to business customers under the TalkTalk Business
TalkTalk Business
TalkTalk Business is a business broadband, telephone, mobile phone and IT support provider owned by TalkTalk Group.-History:...
brand. Like some other UK broadband providers on the ADSL network, TalkTalk has invested in its own exchange infrastructure, known as Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), with 72% of its customers base unbundled as of December 2009.
TalkTalk is listed is on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index
FTSE 250 Index
The FTSE 250 Index is a capitalisation-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies on the London Stock Exchange. Promotions to and demotions from the index take place quarterly in March, June, September and December...
.
History
TalkTalk launched in February 2003 after the acquisition of Opal Telecom in November 2002. The acquisition meant The Carphone Warehouse now had its own switching network providing access to BT Wholesale's landline network for the first time. An initial trial was conducted in the Manchester region. Three months later, TalkTalk was launched with the slogan "landline calls for less", and a guarantee that calls would be cheaper than with their perceived chief competitor, British Telecom.Several high profile TV advertising campaigns commenced in 2003, initially under the first TalkTalk brand utilising the former public face of BT, Maureen Lipman. It appeared that TalkTalk was going head to head with BT with the slogan "It's good to Talk, but it's better to TalkTalk", mocking BT's "It's good to Talk" slogan. In the following years TalkTalk invested heavily in TV advertising and has won several awards for creativity. TalkTalk Broadband was launched in November 2004. The free broadband offer was later launched in April 2006. The company was criticised several times for making exaggerated claims such as "Free Broadband Forever" which later turned out to be misleading.
The acquisitions of the UK operations of Tele2
Tele2
Tele2 AB is a major European telecommunications operator, with about 34 million customers in 11 countries. It serves as a fixed-line telephone operator, cable television provider, mobile phone operator and Internet service provider.- Overview :...
for £11.5m and One.Tel
One.Tel
One.Tel was a group of Australian based telecommunications companies, including principally the publicly listed One.Tel Limited established in 1995 soon after deregulation of the Australian telecommunications industry, most of which are currently under external administration by court appointed...
for £169.6m culminated in TalkTalk now having 2.5m customers.
The Carphone Warehouse purchased the UK ISP business of AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
in October 2006 for £370m and renamed it AOL Broadband
AOL Broadband
- History :The UK ISP side of AOL was bought by The Carphone Warehouse in October 2006 for $688m to take advantage of their 100,000 LLU customers which made The Carphone Warehouse the biggest LLU provider in the UK....
.
In June 2009 a £236 million deal to purchase Tiscali UK by The Carphone Warehouse
The Carphone Warehouse
Carphone Warehouse Group PLC , known as The Carphone Warehouse, is Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer, with over 1,700 stores across Europe. It is based in the United Kingdom and is a 50% subsidiary of Best Buy...
was approved by the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
Competition Commission. The acquisition was completed on 6 July 2009 with the business becoming part of TalkTalk. At the time Carphone Warehouse announced that TalkTalk would be spun out from the group as a separate listed company, with the Tiscali, AOL Broadband and TalkTalk brands all coming together as one brand eventually.
According to the January 2009 financial announcement by Carphone Warehouse plc, TalkTalk had 2.7 million customers. The Carphone Warehouse's full-year earnings statement in November 2009 revealed the TalkTalk customer base had risen to 4.12 million following the purchase of Tiscali UK earlier in the year. TalkTalk was the sponsor of the sixth series of the The X Factor
The X Factor (UK series 6)
The sixth series of British television music competition The X Factor started on ITV on 22 August 2009 and was won by Joe McElderry on 13 December 2009. Cheryl Cole emerged as the winning mentor for the second consecutive year, the first time in the show's history that a mentor has won back-to-back...
, which started on 22 August 2009.
TalkTalk announced that a Tiscali UK service centre originally opened for Toucan in Sligo
Sligo
Sligo is the county town of County Sligo in Ireland. The town is a borough and has a charter and a town mayor. It is sometimes referred to as a city, and sometimes as a town, and is the second largest urban area in Connacht...
would be closed in 2010 with the loss of 160 jobs. Some workers from the Sligo centre would be transferred to Waterford while the company is also advertising 60 new positions at Waterford..
In 2011 TalkTalk launched HomeSafe, a network-level online security and website blocking system. The free product is aimed at parents who want to filter web content such as pornography or violence. TalkTalk claims to be the first UK ISP to offer this functionality.
In August 2011, TalkTalk was fined £3 million by the independent telecommunications regulator Ofcom
Ofcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...
for incorrectly billing over 65,000 customers between 1 January 2010 and 4 March 2011. The company had been overcharging customers for services that had not been received which resulted in the company paying an additional £2.5 million in refunds. Ofcom warned TalkTalk in November 2010 to rectify their billing problem after 62,000 incorrect bills were issued and were given a deadline which they did not meet. TalkTalk was announced as the most complained about telecommunications company for landline and broadband for 2011 by Ofcom.
TalkTalk Ireland
Though TalkTalk never offered its services to customers in the Republic of IrelandRepublic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, the company maintained a customer service centre in Waterford
Waterford
Waterford is a city in the South-East Region of Ireland. It is the oldest city in the country and fifth largest by population. Waterford City Council is the local government authority for the city and its immediate hinterland...
until October 2011
October 2011
October 2011 is the tenth month of the current year. It began on a Saturday and ended after 31 days on a Monday.- Portal:Current events :This is an archived version of Wikipedia's Current events Portal from October 2011....
, which was originally set up for AOL UK
AOL Broadband
- History :The UK ISP side of AOL was bought by The Carphone Warehouse in October 2006 for $688m to take advantage of their 100,000 LLU customers which made The Carphone Warehouse the biggest LLU provider in the UK....
and provided services for both companies. On 7 September 2011 it was announced by Talk Talk Ireland Ltd. that the Waterford call-centre would cease operations within the next 30 days. It had been speculated in the Irish press that the jobs would later relocate to South-East Asia and the UK. The Government of Ireland and its agencies have criticised how TalkTalk and its subsidiary TalkTalk Ireland Ltd. dealt with the job losses. The TalkTalk call centre closed its doors in Waterford on 7 October 2011, with the loss of over 570 jobs.
Previously, TalkTalk announced that a Tiscali UK service centre originally opened for Toucan in Sligo
Sligo
Sligo is the county town of County Sligo in Ireland. The town is a borough and has a charter and a town mayor. It is sometimes referred to as a city, and sometimes as a town, and is the second largest urban area in Connacht...
would be closed in 2010 with the loss of 160 jobs. Some workers from the Sligo centre would be transferred to Waterford while the company is also advertising 60 new positions at Waterford.
Broadband and fixed-line telephony
The company has operated broadband and landline telephone services since it first launched. Following the purchase of the UK ISP division of AOL, broadband services under the AOL BroadbandAOL Broadband
- History :The UK ISP side of AOL was bought by The Carphone Warehouse in October 2006 for $688m to take advantage of their 100,000 LLU customers which made The Carphone Warehouse the biggest LLU provider in the UK....
brand are also provided, with some AOL content partnerships available for TalkTalk customers.
Tiscali UK provided telephone and broadband services both bundled and separate until being rebranded on 7 January 2010. On this day the company closed to new business. TalkTalk announced in December 2009 that customers with just broadband services would be encouraged to subscribe to a telephone service or pay an extra £5 monthly charge. The Tiscali portal content moved to the TalkTalk website, while the company name remained Tiscali UK Limited trading as TalkTalk.
Mobile telephony
TalkTalk offers a mobile telephone service called TalkTalk Mobile, which operates as a mobile virtual network operatorMobile virtual network operator
A mobile virtual network operator is a company that provides mobile phone services but does not have its own licensed frequency allocation of radio spectrum, nor does it necessarily have all of the infrastructure required to provide mobile telephone service...
on the Vodafone UK network.
Television
TalkTalk inherited the IPTVIPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...
service from Tiscali and renamed it TalkTalk TV in January 2010. The service had originally launched in London as Homechoice in 2001. TalkTalk is also a partner in the forthcoming TV venture YouView.
Opposition to UK anti-piracy laws
TalkTalk have openly stated that they will refuse to send warning letters to their customers, or hand over any of their personal information, even if it became a legal requirement for them to do so. TalkTalk say that the UK "government's plans to punish people suspected of illegal downloading are an assault on human rights", and pledged to fight government anti-piracy laws. In 2010, TalkTalk launched a major campaign, Don't Disconnect Us, against government plans to disconnect users suspected of repeat copyright infringement.Sponsorship
In 2004, TalkTalk won the sponsorship rights to Big BrotherBig Brother (UK)
Big Brother UK is the British version of the Dutch Big Brother television format, which takes its name from the character in George Orwell's 1948 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four...
from the UK mobile firm O2. Sponsorship continued until the racism controversy
Celebrity Big Brother racism controversy
The Celebrity Big Brother racism controversy was a series of events related to incidents of perceived racist behaviour by contestants on the television series Celebrity Big Brother 2007 shown on British television station Channel 4...
of Celebrity Big Brother 2007
Celebrity Big Brother 2007 (UK)
Celebrity Big Brother 2007 was the highly controversial fifth series of the United Kingdom reality television series Celebrity Big Brother, a spin-off of Big Brother. The series was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK , and involved a number of celebrities referred to as 'housemates', who live in the...
after which the company retracted its sponsorship agreement.
Telecom sales
In 2005 TalkTalk was accused of using the practice of telephone slammingTelephone slamming
Telephone slamming is an illegal telecommunications practice, in which a subscriber's telephone service is changed without their consent. Slamming became a more visible issue after the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the mid-1980s, especially after several brutal price wars...
(changing consumers' residential phone line over to a new provider without their consent). Some cases were linked to instances of mis-selling by sales people on the doorstep or by telephone; other consumers reported that their personal data had been misused after buying mobile telephones from Carphone Warehouse. These sales techniques exploited a loophole in British law which allowed consumers to change telecom service providers more easily. In 2011, it was again accused of the practice of slamming, a fact reported on the BBC Watchdog Television program on Tuesday 24 May 2011.
"Free" broadband
In 2006 TalkTalk launched a promotion offering free broadband. The promotion attracted criticism when demand outstripped supply and the network systems were unable to cope with the consumer response.April 2006
On 11 April 2006, TalkTalk started offering a free broadband service (up to 8 Mbit/s with a 40 GB monthly usage limit) for life to all subscribers to their Talk3 International telephone tariff at £20.99/month. Conditions included signing up to a minimum 18 month contract and a £29.99 connection fee.
July 2006
The Advertising Standards Authority
Advertising Standards Authority (United Kingdom)
The Advertising Standards Authority is the self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry in the United Kingdom. The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so cannot interpret or enforce legislation. However, its code of advertising practice broadly reflects legislation in many instances...
(ASA) challenged TalkTalk on their free broadband offer.
Soon after this challenge, TalkTalk began to offer free broadband on their cheaper Talk3 tariff. This allowed people to have unlimited telephone calls, broadband and line rental for £19.99 a month. This offer was available to new and existing customers, though broadband was only free for customers connected to a Local loop unbundling
Local loop unbundling
Local loop unbundling is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises...
(LLU) exchange. As of July 2006, TalkTalk claimed that free broadband was available to 70% of the UK population. They hope that this figure will increase as British Telecom allow the unbundling of their remaining exchanges. Customers not on an unbundled exchange are charged a monthly fee for broadband access. Many users of TalkTalk Broadband do not experience the full 8 Mbit/s speed, as this depends on the extent to which the user's local exchange has been unbundled, and (as with all ADSL services) the distance from the exchange. Users not on unbundled exchanges get a fixed speed service at 0.5, 1 or 2M and not "up to 8M".
Some experts predicted this might provoke a UK broadband price war.
Shortly following this report, Orange began to offer free broadband to users of their monthly mobile phone contracts, and Sky also began offering a variety of free or very cheap broadband packages to their subscribers.
Due to the unexpectedly high number of customers who signed up to the free broadband service, the launch suffered complaints with regard to a long waiting list to join the broadband programme and many difficulties in contacting TalkTalk customer services. In a Sunday Times interview, Charles Dunstone admitted that Carphone's TalkTalk business was "struggling to cope" with the more than 400,000 customers who signed up for high-speed internet access since the service launched in April. He also compared TalkTalk Broadband to "a little baby who’s waking up every two hours and is disturbing the family and making our lives a nightmare."
September 2006
TalkTalk allowed customers to escape the binding 18-month contract for broadband "if it had failed to keep its service commitments in their case".
October 2006
On the BBC programme Watchdog (3 October 2006), Charles Dunstone stated "I got it wrong. I didn't realise that free broadband was going to have the effect on people it has."
November 2006
To the Mail on Sunday Charles Dunstone stated "In about 20% of customers there is some kind of problem with the phone exchange, the line, or something else. There is no point trying to pretend everything is all right. Our business exploded and we compressed the problems everyone in the industry has had into a few months. It has given customers nightmares and I just can't ignore complaints."
A customer satisfaction poll by uSwitch
USwitch
uSwitch.com is a UK-based price comparison and switching website started in 2000. The site allows consumers to compare prices for a range of energy, personal finance, insurance and communications services...
places TalkTalk and Orange joint bottom for customer satisfaction.
January 2007
The published figures show that by the third quarter of 2006, 540,000 users had been subscribed to TalkTalk broadband of which 132,000 were (TalkTalk) LLU lines. In the third quarter trading update, the published figure was 413,000 customers unbundled, including 281,000 AOL Broadband customers.
Roger Taylor (CFO) reported that the number of TalkTalk Broadband customers was lower than expected, but was forecasting 700,000 customers on unbundled lines (LLU) by March 2007.
In response to the sign up rate halving, The Carphone Warehouse has introduced a free 30 day trial for broadband customers. Charles Dunstone told staff this week that the free trial was "an attempt to give people the confidence to try it, despite what they might have heard". Customers will be able to cancel the contract within 30 days without incurring a penalty.
Data pimping
In early 2008 it was announced that TalkTalk had entered into an agreement (along with BT and Virgin MediaVirgin Media
Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...
) with the former spyware
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
company Phorm
Phorm
Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, is a Delaware, United States-based digital technology company known for its advertising software. Founded in 2002, the company originally distributed programs that were considered spyware, from which they made millions of dollars in revenue...
to intercept and analyse their users' click-stream data
Clickstream
A clickstream is the recording of the parts of the screen a computer user clicks on while web browsing or using another software application. As the user clicks anywhere in the webpage or application, the action is logged on a client or inside the web server, as well as possibly the web browser,...
, and sell the anonymised aggregate information as part of Phorm's OIX advertising service. At the time, TalkTalk confirmed that the new Phorm system, when implemented, would be a strictly opt-in service. In July 2009, Charles Dunstone, CEO of TalkTalk Group announced that TalkTalk had withdrawn plans to introduce Phorm, along with a similar announcement from BT in the same week.
TalkTalk now use EDEH (Enhanced DNS Error Handling) which suggests sites if the entered URL does not exist and UEI (Usage Exchange Initiative) which exchanges their customers' anonymised usage data with a third party for market research purposes. These settings are defaulted to Opt-in to allow TalkTalk to force these "services" onto the user, but can be set to Opt-out. The settings are found in your Manage My Account / Personal details section of your account.
Broadband speed
In a study carried out by UK telecoms regulator OfcomOfcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...
in 2010, TalkTalk was found to have average speeds of 7.7-9.3 Mbit/sec
Digital Economy Bill
TalkTalk has been the most vocal ISPs against the introduction of the Digital Economy Bill. TalkTalk released a video protesting against the law called "Home taping is killing music" Upon the passing of the bill TalkTalk issued a statement on the company blog which made it clear that the company would resist attempts to use the bill against their customers.
We stand by our pledges to our customers:
- Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it.
- If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.
URL interception
On July 26, 2010 The RegisterThe Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...
reported that TalkTalk had begun harvesting URLs accessed by TalkTalk customers as part of a new anti-malware system it is developing in conjunction with Huawei
Huawei
Huawei is a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China...
, the manufacturer of its network servers. When a user accesses a web page, the URL is harvested and the servers issue the same URL request with the intention of checking the site for malicious code. TalkTalk claims that no personally identifiable information is being harvested however, like Phorm
Phorm
Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, is a Delaware, United States-based digital technology company known for its advertising software. Founded in 2002, the company originally distributed programs that were considered spyware, from which they made millions of dollars in revenue...
, some users argue there are some potential legal issues with this harvesting of information. Under relevant UK legislation, URLs are deemed communications content and interception without permission is prohibited.