TalkTalks New UK YouView Broadband TV Service Creates 500 Jobs

The recent launch of TalkTalk’s new YouView TV (IPTV) service (full details), which is being included alongside the ISPs unlimited broadband and anytime UK calls “Plus” package bundle, will apparently also result in the creation of 500 new jobs; most of whom will be engineers. But big challenges remain.

The new service carries a £50 installation fee, which covers the cost of sending an engineer into the customers home. The engineers will be responsible for setting up the new TV service and for making sure that the subscribers line is operating at the best broadband download speed possible; TalkTalks YouView TV service requires a stable speed of 3Mbps+ to function.

As a result TalkTalk has moved to recruit hundreds of new staff to help handle demand for its new service, which will ultimately take the company’s total workforce to 2,800. It’s also hoped that they will help to address concerns about the ISPs past customer support and service woes.

Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk, told the Telegraph:

“This will be the first time TalkTalk engineers have been going into people’s homes. We want to make absolutely sure that they’re the right people with the right manner as well as appropriate skills.”

Harding added that the use of engineers would enable the ISP to control the initial roll-out pace of their TV service, which will eventually be sold without the requirement for an engineer visit (i.e. home user installation). TalkTalk has around 1 million “Plus” customers and understandably doesn’t want to repeat past customer support failings by being unable to handle a sudden influx of demand, which could become more problematic once the service is made available to their existing “Essentials” customers in 2013 (i.e. the majority of their subscriber base).

The success or failure of TalkTalk’s YouView TV proposition, which is intended to help the ISP hold on to its existing customers, is also critical to their future. Back in April 2012 Morgan Stanley, a global financial services firm, warned that the provider faced a near-term Margin Risk from the costs incurred as a result of funding development and launch of the new service (here).

Suffice to say that TalkTalk will be hoping to see a strong uptake, which could prove challenging. BT’s similar Vision IPTV platform has failed to make much of a dent since its launch and missed their initial subscriber targets by quite a wide margin. Meanwhile the UK’s wider pay-TV market remains aggressively dominated by BSkyB (Sky Broadband) and Virgin Media.