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.


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 2011

A 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.