Carphone Warehouse plans European TalkTalk launch
Free calls offer to drive subscribers
Carphone Warehouse has signalled a further move beyond its retail roots with plans to take its TalkTalk fixed line phone service from the UK into Europe over the next year.
Carphone Warehouse Chief Executive Charles Dunstone said the company plans to launch TalkTalk in France, Spain and Switzerland by March 2005.
The announcement came as Carphone Warhouse confirmed that TalkTalk will offer free calls between UK users of the service from April 1. The US-style free calls offer throws down the gauntlet to BT.
Carphone Warhouse believes the offer of free calls will encourage users to persuade their friends and family to sign up.
TalkTalk, launched a year ago, now has 385,000 users, with another 40,000 due to go live over the next 10 days, meeting the target set for the business by Carphone Warhouse.
BT has this week cut its line rental and call charges and is simplifying its tariff structures, but is expected to resist the temptation to offer free calls to its 20m domestic customers.
Today The Carphone Warehouse announces that from 1 April, all calls between all customers on its home phone service TalkTalk™ will be free of charge, regardless of time of day or duration. The rates for all other calls are unchanged and continue to offer discounts to BT, even on BT’s new rates. The launch will be supported by a major marketing campaign, beginning next week.
Chief executive Charles Dunstone said: “Free Calls is great news for our existing customers and will encourage new customers to join and recruit their friends and family so they too can talk for free.
“It isn’t just free local calls, it isn’t even just free national calls: we also plan to offer free international calls between TalkTalk customers in a number of our European markets.
“We expect this to translate into tangible benefits from the overall scale of the business, a reduction in churn and lower average customer acquisition costs.”
