A SCOTTISH company launching next month aims to disrupt the UK telecoms market by being the first to offer customers immediate telephone and broadband services without long-term contracts.
TenTel says it will offer a unique "move-in, turn-on" service with no enforced tie-ins or hidden extras, aimed principally at customers in rented premises.
It aims to work in partnership with landlords and letting agents, offering them a commission for each line of data they supply and for each of their tenants who signs up, with deals that could increase their profitability by up to 40 per cent, according to TenTel.
It says the same business model has worked successfully in the energy market, with landlords agreeing similar deals with suppliers of gas and electricity, and TenTel is confident it can be replicated in the telecoms market.
TenTel anticipates signing 20,000 customers in its first year of trading, generating a turnover of £9million, rising to 100,000 customers within five years. It will initially employ 18 staff at its Borders headquarters.
Robert McKechnie, the company's managing director, said: "This is a brand new approach in the telecoms market that offers customers a less expensive and more convenient service while also providing a new income stream for landlords."
The Selkirk-based company boasts the most competitive prices in the market with only a 30-day notice period for customers who want to cancel their service or switch providers.
For those who want to sign up to a longer-term deal, there will be a 12-month phone and broadband package starting at £250. According to data published by Ofcom, the average household in the UK pays £451 a year for those services.
Letting agents that manage 1000 properties with an average annual rent of £9,000, for example, would achieve an annual yield of £25,000, the equivalent to them managing an extra 250 properties, TenTel says.
It argues that there are 9 million tenants in rented accommodation in the UK, two-thirds of whom will move within a year, giving the company a potential market of 6 million people.
Four out of five customers expect to be connected within five days of ordering phone and broadband but the minimum wait from the 'big four' providers (BT, Sky, Virgin and Talk Talk) is 15 days, according to their terms and conditions.
Mr McKechnie said: "Because we don't spend large sums on marketing campaigns or sales commissions to switching sites, we can pass on those savings in the form of cheaper deals to our customers and commission to our partners."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article