TalkTalk Signals SMB Ambitions With £4 Broadband Services

TalkTalk Business says it plans to shake up what it perceives to be “uncompetitive” SMB broadband market dominated by BT and populated by disillusioned business that are being charged too much for connectivity.

The company has already offered SMB packages for some time, but Charles Bligh, managing director of TalkTalk Business, told us it had never made such a significant push until now. He estimates that BT controls 50-60 percent of the market and TalkTalk has 5 or 6 percent but might already be the second largest player.

“What we’re doing here is re-launching into the SMB market,” he said. “This is not in our view a highly competitive market.”

TalkTalk’s research claims 59 percent of business are experiencing problems with their ISP, more than a quarter are confused about the best packages for their needs and more than 20 percent are looking to switch providers.

New SMB plans

Bligh says that trust and confidence are major factors in this, but price is important too, and says TalkTalk Business’ new SMB plans could save firms hundreds of pounds a year. Companies pay a fixed monthly fee which includes installation, equipment, support and Internet security so they can budget accordingly.

TalkTalk’s new broadband-only SMB plan costs £4 a month and claims to be £594 cheaper over a 24 month period than the BT equivalent, while a package with broadband and calls is £10.50 a month and is billed as £964 cheaper over a 24 month period, and fibre is available for £15 extra.

Of course many SMBs just take consumer broadband services, but TalkTalk says it can offer additional services, like the Talk2Go app that lets users use their landline minutes on their mobile, specialist router equipment and the ability to adapt if a business expands.

There are also plans to eventually offer mobile services to businesses and the company is also working on a small cell solution as it has its own 4G spectrum.

“With our consumer business, we provide TalkTalk Mobile, and we’ll absolutely do that for our business customers,” Bligh said.

Fibre roll outs

TalkTalk also welcomes the new, streamlined superconnected cities broadband voucher scheme, which allows SMBs to apply for grants of up to £3,000 for the installation of superfast broadband in 22 cities, and even says the  government-funded rollout of fibre under the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme is a good thing as rural businesses will have access to better speeds

“The more people who have access to fibre is a good thing,” said Bligh, who said any dispute over how the scheme was handled, i.e. all the money going to BT, was a corporate issue. “It is what it is. We’re not going to go over history.”

The company is also laying its own fibre in the form of a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network in York as part of a joint-venture with CityFibre and Sky and has plans to expand this to between 50 and 60 percent of the UK population, or ten million homes.

Customer service improvements

TalkTalk believes its record of “disrupting” the consumer broadband television market puts it in good stead for its SMB plans, but until recently, TalkTalk was invariably named as the most complained about broadband provider by Ofcom.

Bligh doesn’t think SMBs who had a bad experience with TalkTalk’s consumer service will hold it against the company, adding that it had made significant investments in customer service and was no longer the winner of Ofcom’s unwanted accolade.

“We have made huge strides in customer service and that’s why our Ofcom complaints have come down,” he said. “We didn’t win the wooden spoon last year, BT did.”

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