Last week saw the anniversary of Carphone Warehouse’s free broadband offering TalkTalk. Charles Dunstone described the last 12 months as an extraordinary experience, and has apologised to early adopters who suffered problems.

 

Carphone CEO Charles Dunstone said "It has undoubtedly been an extraordinary experience. We changed the world of broadband forever, and demonstrated to people that they should now expect broadband to be part of their telephone service rather an expensive add on."

TalkTalk’s troubles started when when the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the campaign for free broadband was misleading, following complaints from BT, Tiscali, and NTL:Telewest.

Jealous competitors tried to put a cog in the works by complaining the broadband service was not technically free as it involved an 18 month commitment to a voice service and a connection charge of £29.99.

Regardless, the consumer demand was massive, and hugely underestimated by the Carphone Warehouse, creating a backlog of people waiting to get connected, with many of them unable to even contact the customer service department.

Dunstone admitted that "coping with the demand meant that we couldn’t connect all of the demand at launch", and thanked everyone who took the plunge at the start, apologising for the difficult beginning "sorry if we caused you problems."

Dunstone was quick to point out that the problems have now been resolved.

"We have improved massively over the past 12 months and whilst I am the first to admit we can still get better, we have eliminated the queues, increased the skill and quantity of customer service agents and got over 700,000 people connected to the service."

"Anyone thinking about joining us now can feel confident in our ability to get them connected promptly and on the date promised."

"I came across an old African saying the other day which really struck a chord with me. It says: ‘if you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together’. I am very grateful to everyone both within and outside of the organisation who have worked so hard together, to bring the idea of free broadband to life."