The news comes as the company continues to see 'material' growth across both areas, the integration of recently acquired Virtual 1, and its focus on high bandwidth FTTP and Ethernet services.
At the same, TTG is also announcing its plan to competitively tender its B2B Ethernet supply as the demand for higher bandwidth services is continues to rise in the UK as well as the newly competitive environment in wholesale infrastructure supply.
“The pace of innovation in both the B2B and Consumer wholesale telecoms has accelerated, and businesses and consumers across the UK are requiring more and more usage and great bandwidth connectivity," said Tristia Harrison, CEO of TalkTalk Group.
"That is why we are delighted to be announcing these two important wholesale growth divisions as well as a competitive tender for our B2B Ethernet supply. We are also delighted to welcome Tom O’Hagan and the wider Virtual 1 team to the group and very excited about the future growth projections for the business.”
The newly formed TalkTalk Business Wholesale Services division will be led by Tom O’Hagan, founder and CEO of the recently acquired Virtual1.
The business will offer premium and high bandwidth services to resellers, aggregators, and system integrators, trading as two brands: TalkTalk Wholesale Services and Virtual1.
The proposition combines TalkTalk’s national scale with Virtual1’s portals, improved automation, and sophisticated API capabilities.
“The combination of TalkTalk’s national scale and Virtual1’s market leading software was always going to be a winner. The creation of this new division will allow us to bring all those advantages to customers more quickly and at greater scale,” added Tom O’Hagan, founder and CEO of Virtual 1, managing director of TalkTalk Business Wholesale Services.
As for the newly created Consumer Wholesale Services division, this will be led by Nick Gunga, TalkTalk's current managing director of Wholesale. During his 17-year tenure, Gunga has held a number of positions across the company's consumer business.
The division has over one million residential customers including the recently acquired SSE Phone and Telecom base from OVO as well as long term customers Telecom Plus and Shell Energy.
“Our vision is to become the fastest growing provider of consumer services in the wholesale market. We already are market leading in this area, and we can use our experience to further deepen our relationships with our key partners. We will be able to focus on being the best we can for our customers, and we can't wait to start,” added Nick Gunga, managing director of TalkTalk Consumer Wholesale Services.
With a combined network footprint of 3,000+ on net exchanges, 1,500 high bandwidth Ethernet orders per month across on net, off net and altnet solutions, Virtual1 and TalkTalk say the new competitive tender is an opportunity for both large scale and smaller providers.
