Broadband

After conceding to SamKnows that the property slump was having an impact on its broadband sales Carphone Warehouse has now roughly halved the number of new customers it expects to connect this year, from 400,000 to between 200,000 to 250,000.

However the latest figures from the group also revealed what it is admitting as ‘disruption’ causing AOL subscribers to ditch the brand - for every two new subscribers it added to Talk Talk in the last three months, one person has left AOL.

The figures were not immediately clear in a statement from CEO Charles Dunstone in which he revealed mobile sales had been buoyed over the past quarter by the launch of the iPhone but the group had experience a tough market for broadband.

Onlookers may have been forgiven for being confused by the official statistics with the group claiming 86,000 new Talk Talk subscribers for the second quarter of the year but then only claiming 42,000 net new connections for group.

Enquiries from SamKnows uncovered that the reason behind the large disparity was the unreleased haemorrhaging of 45,000 AOL customers during the same period. A spokesman admitted to SamKnows the customer loss “was mainly down to AOL broadband migrating to the CPW network and billing service which led to a level of disruption. That process is complete and this has a bearing on the target numbers”.

It led to a net gain of 42,000 new subscribers which the FT is reporting as falling significantly below net new connections from BT and Sky. However, Carphone Warehouse has reiterated the ‘disruption’ of moving AOL subscribers to within the group’s billing systems should now be over.

Dunstone went on his statement to reveal he felt the initial launch of free broadband on TalkTalk, despite early customer satisfaction problems, had proven a clever strategy as growing ‘organically’ in today’s broadband market is very difficult.

His comments have led to renewed speculation he will be furthering his courting of Tiscali, rumours which Dunstone was quick to reject to reporters, pointing out that a purchase was not ‘very unlikely’.

“We have always been clear about this: there is a price at which it’s worth having, but we don’t have to have it,” he said.

All eyes will be on the next set of quarterly results from Virgin Media next week to see if broadband connection expectations are being similarly slashed at the cable company or if Carphone Warehouse is alone in its gloomy predictions for subscriber growth.

Tags: AOL, Carphone Warehouse, iPhone, Sky, Talk Talk, Tiscali