Carphone Warehouse is to open four or five electronic megastores in the UK as part of a joint venture with the US consumer electronics giant Best Buy. The group said that the current economic downturn was “the best time” to launch.
However, Best Buy sounded a note of caution, saying that the group would “temper” the rollout in line with the slowdown in consumer spending. “It’s not a race” said Bob Willett, Best Buy’s international chief executive. Around 100 stores are planned for launch throughout Europe in the next five years, with the group hoping to grab 10 per cent of the European retail electronics market ‘over time’.
Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy said in a trading update that they would jointly spend £20 million on the launches in the current financial year to March, with another £30 million earmarked for the following year alongside £40 million in capital spending. The joint retail arm, branded Best Buy Europe, predicts revenues of around £6.2 billion and underlying earnings of £3.5 million by March 2013.
Best Buy bought half of Carphone Warehouse’s retail business, encompassing 2,430 stores in Europe and the US, for £1.1 billion in May. Plans had originally been set to launch the new stores in spring 2009 or the end of 2008. They have now been pushed back 6 months to summer 2009.
Continue Reading »
Posted by ellie_mears on October 15th 2008 in AOL, Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk
Broadband speeds tests have revealed that Virgin Media now offers the fastest broadband speeds, snatching the crown from rival internet service provider O2 for the first time.
An industry official involved in the testing stated: “Virgin Broadband have finally overtaken O2 broadband as the UK’s fastest average download speed supplier. Data shows that the average download speed for a Virgin user is now 6.13Mbps as compared to 5.32Mbps for O2.”
The report indicates that Virgin Media also came ahead of other high-speed broadband providers, including Be Broadband and Sky Broadband.
Both O2 and Virgin offer high-speed packages of 20Mbps, helping ensure they fared well in speed tests against other providers who do not offer such a service. Virgin Media is likely to perform even better in future speed tests as it carries out plans to roll out its 50Mbps broadband service to a wider area.
Other broadband providers did not fare so well in the speed tests, with AOL and Eclipse Internet yielding the poorest results. AOL also scored worst on the upload speed tests along with TalkTalk, another Carphone Warehouse owned provider. For the month of September, the average download speed for Virgin Media was 6.128Mbps compared to an average speed of 5.321Mbps from Be Broadband and 5.32Mbps from O2.
Posted by ellie_mears on October 9th 2008 in AOL, Be Broadband, Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, Eclipse Internet, O2 Broadband, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media
Mobile operators T-Mobile and 3 have signed a five-year agreement with BT to connect 7,500 of their base stations to BT’s high speed next-generation broadband network.
The deal was struck between BT Wholesale and Mobile Broadband Network Ltd (MBNL), a joint venture between 3 and T-Mobile. Mobile Broadband Network was established to provide 98% of the UK with access to high-speed HSDPA mobile broadband by 2010, thus making it the largest network in the country.
Mobile phone providers are being urged to increase their data transmission speeds as more and more users make wider use of mobile broadband. This need for speed has been highlighted as part of the five-year plan. Rival mobile operator Vodafone already signed a similar deal in April, with O2 following suit last May. Orange is now the only major mobile operator in the UK without such a deal.
As part of the agreement, BT will lighten the load of the network operators by carrying data from their mobile broadband services over the newly planned fibre optic network. This is known as backhaul. The deal will be worth several hundred million pounds - a large and welcome boost to BT’s business arm, which has suffered from a recent drop of revenues as companies such as Carphone Warehouse have stopped using its products.
The technology director at T-Mobile UK, Emin Gurdenli said: “This agreement with BT will make sure backhaul is not a constraint now or in the future at a time when T-Mobile is experiencing strong growth in mobile broadband and other mobile data services.”
The release of the Apple 3G iPhone, Google’s G1 and other smartphones such as the N96 are fuelling the current popularity of mobile broadband. As demand further increases, mobile providers will need to make sure that the networks they control can handle the increased volume of data traffic.
The managing director from BT Wholesale Markets, Brian Fitzpatrick said: “BT now supports the base station connectivity requirements of four of the five mobile players in the UK market, bringing our economies of scale to a hugely important element of the communications marketplace.”
Posted by ellie_mears on October 7th 2008 in 3 Mobile Broadband, BT Broadband, Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, Mobile Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, O2 Broadband, Orange Broadband, T-Mobile, Vodafone
It has been officially announced that rumours about leading UK mobile network and ADSL2+ providers O2 Broadband would bundling Apple MacBook laptops with their home broadband and mobile broadband products are nothing more than that.
An O2 spokeswoman confirmed that there are “no such plans to launch an Apple MacBook laptop offer,” and that the rumours are “untrue”.
Mobile network and broadband rivals Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and 3 Mobile have all done well out of broadband and laptop bundle deals, and it was thought that O2 would want to get in on the action.
It was announced earlier this month that Carphone ISP TalkTalk would be giving away iPod Touches as part of a September prize draw, and as both O2 and the Carphone Warehouse have the exclusive right to sell the Apple iPhone in stores across the UK, and it was thought that O2 would want to work out a similar deal with regard to Apple products.
Internet rumour mongers put two and two together to make five, and, well, you know how these things happen.
Posted by Tom on September 30th 2008 in 3 Mobile Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, O2 Broadband, Orange Broadband, T-Mobile, TalkTalk, Vodafone
Here we go again. Virgin Media have called BS on bitter rivals BSkyB over their recent claims with regard to being the first UK ISP to offer punters truly unlimited broadband.
Sky recently removed their fair usage policy from their premier up to 16Mbps Broadband Max service, which means that punters can actually download however much they want, without fear of running into some sort of phantom usage limit and being forced to pay infinity billion pounds in charges; “We believe that we are now the only major broadband provider to offer truly ‘unlimited’ broadband,” crowed the Sky spokesperson at the time.
It was presumably this statement that got Virgin Media’s hackles up. “Virgin Media has always believed that customers should be able to enjoy their broadband as much as they want,” sulked the Virgin official.
“We were the first ISP to provide unlimited broadband packages to our entire customer base, including both cable and ADSL, and have never imposed any form of ‘fair use’ policy.”
Continue Reading »
Posted by Tom on September 29th 2008 in Carphone Warehouse, Free Broadband, Mobile Broadband, Orange Broadband, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Vodafone
Word on the street says that Apple and O2 are about to launch their own laptop and broadband bundle deal, in a bid to emulate the popular connection-and-computer combos that have been on offer from the likes of Orange, AOL and the Carphone Warehouse for the last year or so.
The two companies are thought to be offering customers who sign up for either of O2’s mobile and home broadband services the choice of purchasing an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop either free, or for a heavily discounted price.
We presume, given the pricey nature of Apple stuff that the laptops won’t be free, but we can at least expect some form of price subsidy as part of the bargain. Then again, Apple surprised everyone with the release of the new iPhone 3G, which turned out to be significantly cheaper than everyone expected, so we could be in for a similar surprise this time round.
Currently, 3 Mobile are offering punters who sign up for their 5GB Broadband Plus plan for 24 Months a free HP 550 laptop, and Orange are giving away an Asus Eee PC 900 with every 18 Month 3GB contract.
AOL customers who sign up for the Wireless Plus package can currently claim a free Acer Aspire 5315 Laptop to every customer who signs up, and Vodafone are giving away a Sony NR32 with their 24 Month 3GB mobile broadband deal.
Posted by Tom on September 26th 2008 in 3 Mobile Broadband, AOL, Carphone Warehouse, Mobile Broadband, O2 Broadband, Orange Broadband, T-Mobile, Vodafone
A recent TV advert from Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk has fallen short of advertising regulations for promising ‘free’ broadband even though this was not available in certain areas of the country.
“At TalkTalk, we believe broadband should be free” said the ad. “When you get your landline from us, we give you broadband that’s free.”
10 viewers made complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority claiming that the advert was misleading because the free broadband only applied to regions where Carphone Warehouse had undertaken local loop unbundling (LLU). TalkTalk Broadband is still available to customers in non-LLU areas but the service is not free.
“The ASA noted the free broadband service was not available in all areas of the UK due to the limited coverage of LLU. We acknowledged that TalkTalk did not have control of LLU but, nevertheless, considered that the ad did not make sufficiently clear that the free broadband service was not available to all TalkTalk customers. We concluded that the ad was likely to mislead,” the advertising watchdog noted in its adjudication.
While TalkTalk’s advertising in newspapers and magazines warned customers that the free broadband service was limited to certain geographical areas, the TV adverts carried no such disclaimer.
TalkTalk told the ASA that their failure to mention the limitations of the free broadband deal on their TV adverts was a mere oversight, promising to take their current advert off air, and include the warning in future advertising.
The ASA has received a number of complaints in recent weeks concerning misleading broadband ads. It is seeking to improve transparency in the industry by introducing a new voluntary ISP code of practice, due to come into force in the new year.
Posted by ellie_mears on September 26th 2008 in Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk
Carphone Warehouse has again signalled interest in taking over the home broadband and fixed-line operations of Tiscali in the UK and Italy. The Milanese comms company announced it was looking out for a buyer of its European ops earlier this year, and bidding for the Tiscali broadband tentacles began in April.
At one point, Vodafone, the worlds biggest mobile network, looks set to snap up Tiscali, in a bid to leapfrog its UK mobile rivals Orange and O2, who both have a strong presence in the UK broadband market. However, Vodafone pulled out in June following a falling out over Tiscali’s valuation of its assets.
Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk/AOL) were rumoured to be interested, but after the Vodafone fracas, even they seemed disinterested. Now it appears that a buyout of Tiscali is back on the cards, although this time the offer appears to be just for its British and Italian customers – previously the deal was thought to be for all of Tiscali’s continental concerns.
If such a deal goes ahead, the acquisition would see Carphone Warehouse overtake BT and clinch the top spot in the UK Broadband stakes. A merger of the two would see the total combined consumer base swell to a figure in excess of 4.6million, which would leave BT trailing behind in second place, and the Big 6 becoming a Big 5.
Carphone Warehouse currently serves around 2.8 million UK customers through both TalkTalk and AOL UK. Tiscali, through its own subscriber base and that of Pipex, which it annexed in July 2007, serves a figure just shy of 2 million; 1.84 million after losing 37,000 subscribers last quarter.
In a related story, Tiscali began legal proceedings against BT in July, after it transpired that the market leader, wise to news of a sell-off, played on customers understandable fears by sending out letters to Tiscali subscribers, urging them to switch to a provider that is “complete and is here to stay,” (i.e. BT).
Posted by Tom on September 22nd 2008 in AOL, BT Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, O2 Broadband, Orange Broadband, TalkTalk, Tiscali, Vodafone
From today, Monday 1st September, TalkTalk will be giving its customers a free wireless router on all broadband packages sold, whether online or through the company call centre. Previously, customers received a free ASDL+ modem but had to pay £30 if they wished to upgrade to the wireless router.
A spokesman for the company said in a statement: “The fact that TalkTalk are giving this [wireless router] away free means a significant cost saving for everyone. Coupled with our existing £3.25 a month price point, this will further enhance TalkTalk as the best value broadband package out there.”
All Talk Talk broadband packages offer customers download speeds of up to 8Mbps, a 40GB monthly download limit, 5 email accounts and 15GB of free webspace. New customers are also entitled to a free 30-day trial, during which period they can cancel their subscription at any time.
Posted by ellie_mears on September 1st 2008 in Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk
Traditional ISPs are having to fight harder than ever to retain their customers as more and more of us are switching to mobile broadband.
According to the recent YouGov Dongle Track Report the increasing popularity of mobile broadband could pose a serious threat to Internet Service Providers offering fixed-line connections. The survey found that one in eight mobile broadband subscribers have either abandoned their fixed line ISP or opted for a mobile internet service instead of a traditional ISP. A further 5% of those subscribing to both fixed-line and mobile broadband are planning on dropping their ISP service within the coming year. The mobile networks - Orange, Vodafone, O2, 3 and T-Mobile all offer a mobile broadband service.
According to YouGov “With increasing numbers of households dispensing with their landlines (13% according to Ofcom) accessing the Internet through the mobile phone network is a viable option especially for the young and mobile.”
Continue Reading »
Posted by ellie_mears on August 19th 2008 in 3 Mobile Broadband, AOL, BT Broadband, Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, Mobile Broadband, Next Gen Broadband, O2 Broadband, Orange Broadband, T-Mobile, TalkTalk, Tiscali, Vodafone
