Carphone Warehouse freebie broadband stumbles

Carphone Warehouse’s much-hyped offer of free broadband for its Talk Talk customers seems to be stumbling under the weight of its own success.

Amid reports on Monday that customers signing up for the service now would not be connected for up to three months, the company issued a statement on Monday to say that the problems had been anticipated.

"We always knew there was going to be lots of demand for TalkTalk's Free Broadband," the statement read, "and so we take great care to ensure that our customers are made fully aware up front of their delivery date and they are generally very happy with that.

"We then aim to deliver earlier than that date and in many cases this is being achieved".

A spokesperson for Carphone Warehouse confirmed to ZDNet UK that current sign-ups will have to wait at least two months to get connected, but rejected speculation that the delays would force connections back as far as September.

On his blog, Carphone Warehouse Charles Dunstone recently said such three-month delays were being prevented by "an increasing rate of daily activations". 

Dunstone will have to face the City on Tuesday to give an update on the progress of service’s launch, which was announced in April. 

The connection delays are thought to involve problems with local loop unbundling and IP-streaming, not to mention a rapid take-up rate of around 2,500 customers a day.