LONDON, February 2 /PRNewswire/ --
- Move Will Undercut BT by 60%
- Opal to Claim 20% Market Share and Create Schism
- More Than 10,000 Customers Already Signed, Contradicting Current Economic Downturn
Opal, the UK's leading provider of next generation communications technology for business, is today announcing plans to move against the economic slump by launching a high-end premium business broadband service which aggressively undercuts its competitors on price. This move is intended to dominate the business broadband market and could force out less competitive operators.
The company, which is the B2B division of The TalkTalk Group, is launching Opal Office Broadband, a new premium-grade and prioritised business broadband service which will offer the most technologically advanced broadband currently on the market, for a fraction of the price.
With this new product offering, Opal believes it has the opportunity to take a 20 per cent share of the market, an ambition supported by post-Christmas test sales of the product, of more than 10,000 new connections.
Opal Office Broadband gives businesses a premium business-broadband service with speeds of up to 24 Mbps and network priority for just GBP10 per month; 58% less than BT's nearest equivalent. Crucially, it operates across the group's Next Generation Network, which is the most widely penetrated and developed in the UK, giving Opal significant technological and scale advantages over its competitors.
Opal is anticipating that the product's advanced technology and bold pricing will create a schism in the market similar to that created by TalkTalk, which disrupted the consumer market in 2006 when it launched its free broadband package.
Paul Lawton, Managing Director of Opal, said: TalkTalk overhauled the residential broadband market in 2006 with its free broadband offering and we anticipate the launch of Opal Office Broadband will do the same in the business sector.
The group has spent two years and a GBP200m investment programme building a resilient 'Next Generation' national network which supports over 1.4 m broadband customers. It is this investment that has made the launch of Opal Office Broadband possible. There are no other providers that can compete with us on price, quality and coverage.
This move is in contrast to market conditions. With the country sliding deeper into recession, we see this as a key enabler in helping UK businesses to obtain a high quality business grade service and save money. We also anticipate this aggressive move may make trading extremely tough for those telecoms operators which are less competitive in the market place and it could result in some consolidation.
For further information, please visit: http://www.opal.co.uk or contact Will Ockenden or Eloise Garret at Lucre on +44(0)113-243-1117; will@lucrecommunications.com ; Eloise@lucrecommunications.com .
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