TalkTalk posts jolly six months
It's good to (be) TalkTalk
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Carphone Warehouse spin-off TalkTalk is reporting a profitable six months, with more unbundled exchanges in preparation for its planned assault on TV next year.
The company increased revenue by more than 10 per cent compared to last year, with a pre-tax income of £887m in the last six months, resulting in an EBITDA of £121m which is up 17.5 per cent on last year.
More interestingly the company has managed to unbundle a smidgen over 2,000 exchanges, serving 81 per cent of its customers.
Those customers are generating an average of £24.70 per month for TalkTalk, up from last year thanks to more unbundled exchanges which allow TalkTalk to avoid paying BT for carriage. There are 18,000 more customers too.
The plan is to unbundle another 700 exchanges, which should bring 92 per cent of customers into the fold, but avoiding BT isn't the only reason to unbundle.
Where TalkTalk has its own kit in the exchange it can control the quality of service, ideal for providing access to video-on-demand service YouView (formally known as Canvas). TalkTalk is spending heavily on video-distribution infrastructure with the intention of launching its YouView service in the middle of next year. ®
COMMENTS
TalkTalk Crap
For the past few years I was with Tiscali and because my speed was not too good, I registered in early June 2010 with TalkTalk to upgrade my package and get a better speed. Lots of promises made during telephone registration and was told that there would be 'No Problems', I could keep my telephone number and would be 'up and running in a week or so'.
June went by and nothing, so I phoned TalkTalk 'Customer help' number (an 0845 job). After the ususal 'Press one for ....., press two for ..... etc. and waiting on the line for about 25 minutes listening to what just about passes for 'music', I finally got through to a human being - albeit in Mumbai I think. I explained my situation and after confirming my telephone number and answering 'security' questions, I was eventually told that I was speaking to Tiscali Customer Service and they could not help me - despite having used the TalkTalk telephone number quoted on their website. I was asked to hold, while I was put through to TalkTalk customer service...... More 'music' and another 5 minute wait, after which there was a continuous tone and then the line went dead !! You would have thought that they might have called me back, since they had my telephone number - No chance!
I gave up on the phone 'Help' line and decided to try via email to get a progress report on my update. Over the following three months, I sent around 30 emails to Tiscali/TalkTalk and the only replies I got from several diiferent people were apologies and platitudes but no offer of action to resolve my issue. Basically, Tiscali were saying that the problem lay with TalkTalk and TalkTalk were saying it was Tiscali's problem, so I was getting nowhere fast!!
I then decided to write to their chief executive and the senior director of TalkTalk customer services. I addressed the envelopes to them personally and sent them 'Signed for' delivery. Guess what - not even an acknowledgement of my letters. No surprise there then !
So, I have now ditched Tiscali/TalkTalk/Carphone Warehouse and gone with BT and I am taking every opportunity I can, to relate my experience with that bunch of TalkTalk CRAP!!
My Tiscali / TalkTalk speed was around 1.8Mbps and now with BT, I'm getting around 6.3Mbps....
TalkTalk etc. - Avoid them like the plague..............
Grief and woe
I've been using Talktalk via One Tel. I can say that One Tel was a great company and saved me a lot of money in their day. TalkTalk charge more for their services than we pay in calls per month and they keep hounding me to switch to their shoddy broadband.
I work in the industry of computer repair, so I make so many site visits and have to talk to their offshore call centres on a weekly basis and know from first hand what shoddy service they offer for technical support, not only that, the customers get nothing like the throughput their line should be able to handle.
That said, I do have some customers with supposedly 8M connections that their lines connect at 288K because TalkTalk have problems at their exchange with handling their unbundled lines.
Out the window goes the 50:1 contention ratio on the TalkTalk broadband lines, there is no way they stick to that. Possibly 500:1 on a good day.
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