By Alex Scroxton24 September 2008
Carphone Warehouse consumer internet subsidiary the TalkTalk
Group has handed a two-year contract to supply home networking routers to
D-Link.
Under the terms of the agreement, customers of Carphone
Warehouse’s TalkTalk and AOL Broadband ISPs will receive D-Link’s DSL-2640R
wireless G broadband router as part of a start-up package.
D-Link UK general manager Chris Davies said that although
the kit supplied was not yet compatible with the 802.11n standard, which is
becoming steadily more widespread, a dot n package was waiting in the wings.
“TalkTalk’s plan is to switch to dot n in their own time,
and when they do we’ll be ready,” said Davies.
Davies said that D-Link would also be providing some support
and training to Carphone Warehouse support staff, although he added that “we
were dealing with a very mature ISP, so they have a lot of that support
capability already locked down”.
Taiwan-based D-Link went up against nine others to be
selected for the contract, a process that included rigorous testing to both BT
and Carphone Warehouse’s in-house standards.
“Technical performance of the selected products exceeded our
very high standards and clearly represented a strong value to the end-user and
our ISP brands,” added AOL Broadband senior manager of future technologies,
Matt Bird.
