Four million subscribe as TV boosts TalkTalk
TELLY lovers are switching on to TalkTalk in record numbers, helping the telecoms group to boost sales for the second quarter in a row.
TalkTalk, which targets more price-conscious households, increased its TV customers by 160,000 to 390,000 in its first quarter.
Chief executive Dido Harding said the budget market had potential, with seven million people in the UK not using the internet.
She said: “We’d rather be a Primark than a Harvey Nichols.”
The group, which launched its TalkTalk TV service on the YouView platform nine months ago, is battling with rivals Virgin Media, BSkyB and BT.
But it pledged to maintain the momentum by focusing on people who want a basic package of on-demand programmes and the ability to rewind and play-back live TV.
Just over a quarter of its TV customers have bought pay-TV programming with entertainment, children’s shows and films such as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained proving most popular, while only 2 per cent of purchases involved sport.
The telephone and broadband provider boosted total customer numbers for the third quarter running, by 8,000 to 4,071,000, while revenues rose 1.7 per cent to £421million.
About 96 per cent of its customers are now on its own network rather than those provided by rivals and the rate at which users have left fell to 1.4 per cent from 1.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year.
Its shares, however, fell 6½p to 245½p.
Meanwhile, demand for smartphones on long contracts helped TalkTalk’s former sister company Carphone Warehouse to better-than-expected results.