TelecomTV TelecomTV
  • News
  • Videos
  • Channels
  • Events
  • Network Partners
  • Industry Insights
  • Directory
  • Newsletters
  • Digital Platforms and Services
  • Open RAN
  • Cloud Native Telco
  • Telcos and Public Cloud
  • The Green Network
  • Private Networks
  • Open Telco Infra
  • 5G Evolution
  • Access Evolution
  • Edgenomics
  • Network Automation
  • 6G Research and Innovation
  • Security
  • More Topics
  • Network Partners
  • Industry Insights
  • Directory
  • Newsletters
  • |
  • About
  • Contact
  • |
  • Connect with us
  • Digital Platforms and Services
  • Open RAN
  • Cloud Native Telco
  • Telcos and Public Cloud
  • The Green Network
  • Private Networks
  • Open Telco Infra
  • 5G Evolution
  • Access Evolution
  • Edgenomics
  • Network Automation
  • 6G Research & Innovation
  • Security
  • Connect with TelecomTV
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Help
  • Contact
  • Sign In Register Subscribe
    • Subscribe
    • Sign In
    • Register
  • Search

Broadband

Broadband

TalkTalk offers gigabit broadband for a multi-megabit price

Ian Scales
By Ian Scales

Jun 23, 2015

via Flickr © Sean MacEntee (CC BY 2.0)

via Flickr © Sean MacEntee (CC BY 2.0)

UK multi-service operator, TalkTalk, has thrown a gauntlet of sorts into the UK broadband market with its already announced ultra-fast-optic (UFO) fibre broadband offer. The first town to be marketed (or at least part-marketed) is the northern city of York where two suburbs are to be offered fibre to the premises (FTTP) gigabit service, but at the same price as TalkTalk’s copper product, at £21.75 per month.

TalkTalk says it’s the first UK ISP to do this, with the price including both the line charge and the broadband service whereas usually, because of the UK unbundling transparency requirements, the public is used to the line charge and the service charge being itemised separately. The services are uncapped.

The UFO service will come as standard with TalkTalk’s three consumer packages:  SimplyBroadband, Essentials TV and Plus TV, as well as TalkTalk’s Complete Business Broadband package for small to medium sized enterprises which are also getting a rock-bottom offer of £25 per month.

TalkTalk is rolling out the service in association with Sky and fibre specialist, CityFibre, and is field-testing what it describes as an ‘innovative’ approach to ‘driving local engagement’. It’s getting residents to vote on whether they all want to take the service, hoping that local feeling and collective action (along with a dose of peer pressure) will be enough to get a critical mass of early adopters to sign on the dotted line to make a fibre-rollout viable. Variations on this technique have been used in the past by BT and more recently, at a city-wide level, by Google with its Google Fiber deployments in the US. In this case, if there enough votes, the joint venture will also provide ‘ultra fibre optic’ to nominated good causes in the local community free of charge.

At £21.75 TalkTalk’s ‘ultra fibre optic’’ offer is cheaper than BT’s ‘superfast’, but in deciding on a name TalkTalk had to weave a path around the semantic mess left by BT which had insisted on calling its VDSL services superfast fibre broadband (and had actually won a court case over the issue), when of course they are DSL. So TalkTalk has eschewed the obvious ‘gigabit’ marketing gambit (which is broadly what it’s offering) in favour of the less definitive ‘ultra’ to trump ‘super’ in the public mind (though what the next speed ramp can be called is anyone’s guess).

Related Topics
  • Access Evolution,
  • Analysis & Opinion,
  • Business Models,
  • FTTx,
  • News,
  • Policy & Regulation,
  • Telco & CSP

More Like This

Access Evolution

UK fibre altnets face 2023 squeeze

Feb 6, 2023

Telcos and Public Cloud

What’s up with… BT and Azure, Telecom Italia, Ofcom and Openreach

Feb 3, 2023

Access Evolution

Ofcom consults on proposed Openreach FTTP pricing offer

Feb 3, 2023

5G Evolution

What’s up with… Verizon and Verana, BT, ETSI

Feb 2, 2023

Access Evolution

Europe at risk of missing 2030 gigabit target – ETNO

Feb 2, 2023

Email Newsletters

Stay up to date with the latest industry developments: sign up to receive TelecomTV's top news and videos plus exclusive subscriber-only content direct to your inbox – including our daily news briefing and weekly wrap.

Subscribe

Top Picks

Highlights of our content from across TelecomTV today

0:46

The Cloud Native Telco Summit returns this September!

8:32

Azita Arvani on Being a Female Leader at Rakuten Symphony

16:19

AT&T Amy Zwarico on securing telco applications in the public cloud

1:44

Join us for the greatest industry debate of the year!

TelecomTV
Company
  • About Us
  • Media Kit
  • Contact Us
Our Brands
  • DSP Leaders World Forum
  • Great Telco Debate
  • TelecomTV Events
Get In Touch
[email protected]
+44 (0) 207 448 1070
Connect With Us
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Terms of Use
  • Legal Notices
  • Help

TelecomTV is produced by the team at Decisive Media.

© Decisive Media Limited 2023. All rights reserved. All brands and products are the trademarks of their respective holder(s).