TalkTalk at Sainsbo’s

Just been down to my local Sainsbury’s to top up the Vino Collapso Collection and surprise, surprise there was two agents accosting shoppers browsing the latest and greatest snacks. Of course, I listened to the sales patter which was all about CPS voice not broadband, the look on the poor guy’s face when I revealed I was already with TalkTalk was priceless. He pleaded ignorance when I asked if the new sales drive had anything to do with BT winning customers back. He also pleaded ignorance when I asked if sales were poor at the local Carphone Warehouse store which is around a mile away. He looked visibly irked if I asked if he was getting a lot of complaints about TalkTalk Not-So-Free Broadband, so I decided to move along to the Wine before he punched me.

I was thinking on the journey home about Virgin Media’s comments that they are set to announce a tie-up with a major retailer. If this is not Carphone it will be bad news and mean Carphone have even less cellular product to shift. If it is Carphone, it will be quite a coop and good news.

Also, by putting 1 + 1 together and getting 10, I was thinking that perhaps Carphone might be able to offload the whole of the TalkTalk nightmare onto Virgin Media. It would immediately bring scale to the Virgin off-net plans and also cement their position as the UK’s #1 broadband company and #2 voice company. There must be economies of scale especially in the backbone and back-office field.

I also heard from a cyberbuddy that there is a rumour going around the city that Carphone is going to get exclusivity on the iPhone. He put the rumour down to desperation from the bears. Apple needs the operators to provide the subsidy and give them a share of the on-going revenues and isn’t going to give exclusivity to Carphone unless every mobile operator tells them where to go. My money is still on O2 getting the exclusivity.