UK ISP TalkTalk Business Partners with AltNet Freedom Fibre

Broadband ISP TalkTalk Business (TTB) has announced that they’ve formed a “strategic partnership” with alternative network provider Freedom Fibre, which is currently rolling out a new wholesale Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and Ethernet network across parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Shropshire and North Wales.

At present Freedom Fibre is already being supported by TalkTalk, which holds a stake in the business and sells packages to residential consumers across their network. But the new partnership looks set to extend that across the ISP’s business division to “widen its accessibility of affordable, ultrafast full fibre internet across the North West business community.”

The AltNet operator, which is being backed by a £84m investment from Equitix and a £16m Santander debt facility, is currently aiming to cover 70,000 premises by the end of 2022 (they’d done 40k by Nov 2022 and are quickly ramping up) and they have a long-term aspiration to reach over 2 million UK properties (Coverage Map).

Meanwhile TTB, which claims to have seen an increase in demand for their Business focused full fibre offerings, hopes that the addition of Freedom Fibre will support their “focus on boosting connectivity by delivering speeds of up to 1Gb/s, fully symmetric service and unlimited usage, enabling organisations to benefit from the fastest and most cost-efficient fibre connection available to them.”

Lee Sutch, Head of B2B at Freedom Fibre, said:

“Equipping businesses with the services they need to meet the growing demands of commerce is at the core of our mission. TalkTalk Business is already levelling the playing field when it comes to connectivity and keeping the region’s businesses agile, and our partnership will strengthen this by widening full fibre availability across the North West.”

Jon Nowell, Director of TTB’s Small Business and Fibre For Every Business, said:

“There’s no doubt about it – efficient connectivity is crucial to business success in the digitally enabled world we live in. The business landscape has completely transformed in the last few years, and much of this digital transformation is here to stay.

Amidst challenging economic circumstances, small businesses need to ensure they can access fast, reliable broadband in the most cost-effective way. That’s why we’re excited to partner with Freedom Fibre, to continue supporting our new and existing small business partners with the latest full fibre connectivity.”

The announcement is hardly a surprise, given TalkTalk’s existing relationship on the residential side, although it’s presently unclear how long it will be before TTB starts offering products to customers over FF’s network or even via its wholesale channels.