TalkTalk Become First Major UK Broadband ISP to Harness Kraken Platform
Internet service provider TalkTalk has today become the first major UK ISP to sign a deal that will see them adopting the cloud-based Kraken platform (part of Octopus Energy Group). The move is said to be part of the provider’s “ambition to become the most recommended Wi-Fi provider in the UK” (they obviously really mean broadband provider).
Kraken is a kind of overall management platform, which uses machine learning and the cloud to help utilities firms both run their business and interact with customers in a more cost-efficient way. Kraken says that their end-to-end operating system is already contracted to run over 60 million customer accounts (globally), including on behalf of many of the UK’s top utilities, including Octopus Energy, EDF Energy, Severn Trent, E.ON Next and others (e.g. rival ISP Cuckoo also adopted it in 2023).
The partnership will see TalkTalk customers being migrated from various “legacy internal platforms” to Kraken, which claims to use a “single universal model to simplify all aspects of customer service, for both customers and colleagues“. By streamlining account operations and consolidating everything into a single platform, Kraken says it will “enable customer service teams to solve any problem” (the use of “any” here is unrestrained, but we suspect it won’t do your weekly clothes ironing.. yet).
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Susie Buckridge, TalkTalk CEO, said:
“At TalkTalk, we are undertaking a significant transformation as part of our ambition to become the most recommended Wi-Fi provider in the UK. An innovative and flexible technology platform that enables us to provide excellent customer service like Kraken is central to our ambition.
I know I speak for all of us at TalkTalk when I say we are excited to be the first major connectivity provider to join the Kraken network, not least because of the significant benefits it will bring to our customers and colleagues.”
Deepak Ravindran, CEO of Kraken for Water & Telco, said:
“After successfully disrupting the energy and water markets, we are thrilled to expand the magic of Kraken to the telco industry with our first scaled telco customer. Our collaboration with TalkTalk gives us a unique opportunity to partner with a leading player in the UK market to deliver outrageously good customer service, unlock operational efficiencies and bring our best-in-class tech to yet another industry.”
TalkTalk added that it would take up to around 2 years to completely migrate their customer base of 2.3 million over to Kraken. The first cohort is expected to “go live later this year“, while the first new customers will be on Kraken by early summer this year, expanding over the next year. No doubt there will be some cost savings for the provider too.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Octopus is taking over the world! Hope they don’t get so big that they lose their touch. Anyway, yes, rather silly to see TalkTalk adding to the Wi-Fi vs broadband confusion. Not helpful, as too many people literally don’t understand the difference and don’t know which bit of their connectivity needs improving!
I understand why a company might want to take small steps when it introduces a new system but 2 years does seem to be an extraordinarily long time to migrate accounts.
They’re probably only do it as and when customers upgrade/recontract.
OMG, I can’t believe the CEO is referring to a broadband internet connection as WiFi.
The boss should step in and give her a good talking to, oh hang on, she is the boss.
Unbelievable.
Next they’ll be telling us going forward (yuk) accounts will be accessed by a PIN number(sic), giving you a safe haven(sic) for your account with full details of your Fiber(not) FTTC connection.
Companies often propagate tosh as it’s ‘popular parlance’
I can believe it sadly. In the grand scheme of things and my time working for ISPs, the general public are mostly using wifi rather than hard wiring devices so I guess she’s just trying to speak to those clientele rather than the more technical among us.
‘… it would take up to around 2 years to completely migrate their customer base of 2.3 million over to Kraken.’
Given the rate they’re losing customers, I imagine it would be a lot quicker than that.
Given the fact TalkTalk are going down the pan rapidly they might not even exist two years’ time if to collapse into administration. They would not be missed!
Its all well and fine TalkTalk joining the Kraken network but it still wont stop the problem of poor customer service they provide due to oversees call centres. Along with joining Kraken they should bring the call centres back to in house UK based, and provide a customer focused call centre where they listen to the customer rather than going off a script.
I use kraken daily for an energy company, it’s good and does more than legacy systems I have used in broadband before, but it won’t make a difference if the service the advisors give is poor. It is fully accessible where you can do everything on accounts and is easy to fix billing errors etc
Really?
“ambition to become the most recommended Wi-Fi provider in the UK”
Who in there right mind would recomend TalkTalk
Kraken is a rather unfortunate name. Especially of you’re an octopus.
🙂
Best wi-fi provider….come on! Love an ambitious target. Zen must be shaking in their boots!
We’re not. 😉
Views my own.
I survived working for Talktalk from 2009 to 2015 until not long before they decided to go fully abroad for their customer facing operations.
WiFi – so many ‘new’ users think broadband and WiFi are two different things – which of course they are – but many people don’t realise Broadband is what delivers the service to the home and WiFi around the home (and the neighbours). Same people think that mobile ‘phones work on WiFi; even DECT ones that come as part of the BT FTTP supply. But yes the Talk Talk CEO should know better.
It’s intentional, given like you say many (research says MOST) average internet users don’t think, or care that broadband and Wifi are different things.
All their marketing and comms aggregate the whole Connectivity/ONT/Router into “Wifi” because that’s what most of their base do.
Wi-Fi, . . . . kracken, . . . octopus . . . CEO . . . mobius dickus.