TalkTalk YouView trials in early 2012
November 15, 2011
Broadband provider TalkTalk is to launch an in-house trial of YouView in early 2012. The broadband provider said it will launch a “friends and family” trial of the service in the first quarter next year, although the proposed launch date will likely be in January.
TalkTalk will give around 3,000 of its YouView STBs, made with manufacturer Huawei, to staff as part of the trial to “focus on the end to end customer experience”.
The public trial will launch in “late Q4 or early Q1” – with 10,000 customers set to receive the service. “The launch of YouView next year will be a major development for TalkTalk and we are on track to offer a value for money product of phone, broadband and TV in Spring 2012,” the company said.
Meanwhile the company announced it had lost 43,000 broadband customers as sales fell to £844 million but profits rose from £17 million to £41 million.
TalkTalk, spun off from Carphone Warehouse in March 2010, said a shake-up of its back office would help keep it on track to cut costs by up to £50 million.
The company said that the number of departing users at TalkTalk – which earlier this year was fined £3 million for billing ex-customers who had cancelled their contracts – was “very small” relative to the group’s total customer base of 4.1 million and were mainly those not on their own network and, therefore, the less profitable.