UK-based The Carphone Warehouse provides mobile and landline telephony as well as broadband services to the UK and European markets. To date it has an estimated 2.2 million residential broadband customers and 2.7 million residential voice-only customers, making it one of the top providers in its market

Wynand Schutte, GM of the TalkTalk call centre in Cape Town, says that in 2005, The Carphone Warehouse had a very strong telephony brand and a strong landline customer base.

“The company put a plan and process in pace to start building a broadband customer base in the UK market. It started as a slow, acquisition-driven climb, but the demand for broadband in the UK, particularly super-broadband, is quite high. When The Carphone Warehouse acquired Tele2 and Onetel, increasing its broadband base, it realised it had to create more capacity.”