Posted: 15th Nov, 2011 By: MarkJ

Internet and phone provider TalkTalk ( AOL ) has today released its latest interim results for the six months ended 30th September 2011 (Q3), which revealed that the ISP has
lost -43,000 broadband subscribers since Q2 and now holds a total of
4,129,000. This represent a
sharp decline on the -27,000 lost during their previous quarter but TalkTalk is still expecting a return to growth "
during the first half of calendar year 2012".
As before, nobody will be surprised by the decline, especially with TalkTalk continuing to grace the news for all the wrong reasons (poor support, bad billing practices, dire customer satisfaction reports from Ofcom etc.). Suffice to say that the ISP has a
steep hill to climb, although they do claim to be making progress.
Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk, said:
"These results prove we are delivering on our strategy. Earnings are up 36% half on half and this growth, combined with our enhanced dividend policy, has driven an increase in the dividend of more than 50%. We are ahead of plan on our unbundled exchange roll out and making significant progress towards our £40-50m operating efficiency target.
We are pleased that we are delivering a better experience for our customers, demonstrated by the continuing reduction in calls into our contact centres and a significant increase in the number of customers’ queries being resolved first time. This reflects our priority to improve customer experience and make our end to end systems and processes both more effective and more efficient. There is a lag between these initiatives and improvements in customer numbers, but we are confident that the effects will soon become more apparent."
Indeed TalkTalk has reported a
40% reduction in customer service calls and claimed that 75% of the calls that it does receive are now resolved on first contact. Separately the launch of their paid YouView based IPTV (broadband tv) product,
TalkTalk TV, is still said to be "
on track" for launch in "
Spring 2012". Triple and quad play bundles are already being designed to support the new service.
Separately TalkTalk claims that
89% of its total broadband base is now unbundled ( LLU ) with 171 new telephone exchanges added in Q3 (up from 87% in Q2). That's important because the operators most significant declines have come from its more expensive off-net (BT-based) platform (-69k). By contrast the cheapest fully LLU lines added +83k in the quarter, although shared LLU lines declined -57k. Some losses were due to migration onto their fully LLU platform.
Overall TalkTalk has managed to unbundle 2,208 telephone exchanges (
covers approximately 89% of the UK population) from BT and had
total quarterly revenue of £421m (down from £423m in Q2). Some £307m of that comes from consumer broadband, £33m from non-broadband services (e.g. phone) and £81m from its business operations.
UPDATE 16th November 2011A few more details about
TalkTalk TV. The new service will begin with a limited 3,000 person strong "
friends and family" trial between the end of 2011 and during the first quarter of 2012. We reported some of this a couple of months back.
TalkTalk's own staff will get first dips, although some existing customers are expected to be invited during Q1-2012. Up to 10,000 existing customers could eventually take part in the trial, which could well include former
Tiscali TV users. As above, the commercial launch should follow before summer 2012.