26 October 2007
The Post Office will launch its own broadband service next week, hoping to use its well-known name and 14,500 high street branches to persuade first-time users to get fast Internet access.
The Post Office is aiming at a million broadband and home phone customers over the next four years as it looks to increase the money it makes from non-postal activities.
A £10 million advertising campaign featuring the platinum selling pop group Westlife is set to promote the idea. The Post Office will be the first broadband provider that allows customers to pay by cash as it tries to bridge the UK's widening digital divide. Broadband take-up in the UK has been slowing recently as many relatively affluent households are already online while lower-income and older households are left on the sidelines.
There is a whole raft of people who are currently digitally excluded but they regularly go into their local Post Office,
said the Post Office's head of telecoms, Martin Moran, adding that more than 24 million people go into their local branch on a weekly basis.
The Post Office is also targeting customers dissatisfied with the service they are getting from their current provider. The launch of the Post Office service coincides with the release from their 18-month contracts of the first wave of "free" broadband customers who signed up with Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk.
The Post Office already has 400,000 home phone customers, makes roughly 10% of its earnings from telecoms but is aiming to reach 25% by 2011. If broadband proves successful it will look at providing a mobile phone service.
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