The Carphone Warehouse has announced a broadband and phone services package.

For a standard monthly line rental charge of GBP11 and a monthly fee of GBP9.99, TalkTalk customers will receive unlimited local, national, and international (to 28 countries) landline calls, along with up to 8Mbps broadband access.

This offer will be available to customers in 1,000 exchange areas, covering nearly 70% of the UK population. If the local exchange has not yet been unbundled, the customer will initially be connected via BT’s wholesale IP Stream service, and then migrated at a later date.

To support this strategy and to generate a more rapid payback on the investment, The Carphone Warehouse intends to deploy its own equipment in the exchanges. Based on current forecasts, the expectation is that the rollout to 1,000 exchanges will be completed by May 2007.

While the package on offer appears to be significantly cheaper than the combined charges for phone and broadband services offered by competitors, such as Bulldog, BT, and NTL, there are other considerations that should be taken into account, especially for employees working from home. Reliability and access speed are important considerations, as well as customer service provision. Where a dependable broadband connection is an important criteria then price should not be the sole arbiter.

In addition, moving from being a reseller of services to managing a complex network of 1,000 nodes and millions of users is a challenge that should not be underestimated, particularly bearing in mind the aggressive rollout planned by The Carphone Warehouse.

Other companies have attempted to go down the unbundling route and have failed to have an impact on the wider market, restricting the offering to a small number of exchanges. The deployment of the required equipment in the exchanges also relies on the co-operation of BT and the availability of BT engineers. These barriers are surmountable but could end up with The Carphone Warehouse having to invest more than planned to achieve its goals of ‘free’ broadband for the majority of its customers.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)