TalkTalk Create New Wholesale Divisions for Business and Consumer

The wholesale division of UK broadband ISP TalkTalk (TalkTalk Business) has today announced that it has created two new wholesale divisions to support both its business-to-business (‘Business Wholesale Services‘) and consumer wholesale (‘Consumer Wholesale Services‘) segments.

The latest move follows hot on the heels of TalkTalk’s acquisition of Ethernet provider Virtual1 (here) and their gobble of around 100,000 broadband and phone customers from rival operator Ovo Energy – sold to consumers via SSE’s broadband brand (here). The ISP now wishes to focus on encouraging wider adoption of their high bandwidth FTTP and Ethernet services via their wholesale platform.

In keeping with that, TalkTalk’s new Business Wholesale Services division will be led by Tom O’Hagan, Founder and CEO of Virtual1, which will offer premium and high bandwidth services to resellers, aggregators, and system integrators. The division will trade as two brands rather than one – TalkTalk Wholesale Services and Virtual1.

Meanwhile, the newly formed Consumer Wholesale Services division will be led by Nick Gunga, TT’s current MD of Wholesale. The division has over 1 million residential customers, including the recently acquired SSE Phone and Telecom base from OVO as well as long-term customers Telecom Plus and Shell Energy.

Tristia Harrison, CEO of TalkTalk Group, said:

“The pace of innovation in both the B2B and Consumer wholesale telecoms has accelerated, and businesses and consumers across the UK are requiring more and more usage and great bandwidth connectivity. That is why we are delighted to be announcing these two important wholesale growth divisions as well as a competitive tender for our B2B Ethernet supply. We are also delighted to welcome Tom O’Hagan and the wider Virtual 1 team to the group and very excited about the future growth projections for the business.”

The announcement also mentions TalkTalk’s intention to “competitively tender its B2B Ethernet supply” as the demand for higher bandwidth services is rising fast with UK businesses of all sizes requiring more usage and ultra-high bandwidth connectivity. Competitive tendering is where potential suppliers bid against each other to win contracts.

The press release is quite vague on the tender itself and so we don’t know precisely how broad it is, but TalkTalk clearly sees it as a “major opportunity for both large scale and smaller providers“, covering 14 areas across the UK. The tender is said to reflect the newly competitive environment in wholesale infrastructure supply.