ISP TalkTalk Acquires UK High Bandwidth Wholesalers Virtual1
UK broadband ISP TalkTalk has today given their business and wholesale connectivity division a boost by entering into an agreement to acquire Virtual1 for an undisclosed sum. The deal will help to grow their scale as a national provider of Ethernet (EAD / leased line) solutions and to strengthen its capabilities.
According to the announcement, TalkTalk and Virtual1 now expect to achieve a combined Ethernet Access Direct (EAD) market share of 25%. The broadband providers partners will also benefit from Virtual1’s capabilities in automation, API and the portal experience, all built off Software Defined Network (SDN) services.
The existing CEO and Founder of Virtual1, Tom O’Hagan, will continue to lead the standalone business of 200 people as part of the TalkTalk Group. Meanwhile, Lazard & Co. Limited acted as Financial Advisor to TalkTalk on the Transaction, while Arma Partners acted as Financial Advisor to Virtual1 on the Transaction, alongside Latham & Watkins, as Legal Advisor.
Tristia Harrison, TalkTalk CEO, said:
“Since taking the company private in February 2021 we have looked to invest to strengthen both our B2B and wholesale platforms. As all businesses continue to experience increasing demands for high bandwidth services, we see huge benefits in acquiring Virtual 1 coupling our national scale network with their market-leading APIs and software capabilities.”
Tom O’Hagan, Virtual1 Founder and CEO, said:
“Virtual1 has built an award-winning self-service portal and suite of APIs to enable businesses to virtually manage their networks with complete visibility of real-time bandwidth, reducing Partners manual intervention and cost, whilst improving the customer experience. We’re delighted to be able to expand the reach of our solutions and increase our scale as a network provider with TalkTalk.”
Just for some context, TalkTalk’s last annual results for 2021 reported that the provider was home to a total of 42,600 High Speed Ethernet Connections, and they achieved a c.24% share of new Openreach Ethernet lines in FY21 – above their market share of c.13% at the time.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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RIP Virtual1 then, I guess.
I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of dealing with Virtual1 during my career. Both as bad as each other. They might be boasting a 25% market share, but that just tells me 25% of leased lines will never get fixed within SLA. 😉
for a company with no money they seem
to be spending it
Having a new owner helps:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/12/broadband-isp-talktalk-uk-sold-to-toscafund-in-1-1bn-deal.html
Interesting. I have a Virtual1 Openreach-based EAD via Focus Group and FTTP with TalkTalk Biz.
Pretty happy with the service from both to be fair.
Crap company buys crap company !
Mark, do you have updates on TalkTalk’s VoIP roll out? They have begun trialling it since end of 2021. Seems intresting as they are one of the only one’s at the moment to not have a voice service on FTTP.
https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/TalkTalk-Digital-Voice-App/bd-p/Voiceapp