Full Fibre Benefits as Utility Warehouse Extend Deal with UK ISP TalkTalk

Broadband, mobile and energy provider Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) has today announced that they’ve extended and expanded upon their existing UK wholesale supply agreement with ISP TalkTalk, which looks as if it will give UW access to the provider’s growing range of alternative full fibre (FTTP) networks.

Utility Warehouse, which is home to a UK customer base of 728,680 (up from 657,411 last year) – including 323,623 taking their broadband services (down from 324,499) and 324,773 taking mobile (up from 302,654) – has been working with TalkTalk for the best part of over 15 years and today’s agreement will see that continue for another 5 years.

The new agreement is said to include “significant commercial benefits for both organisations” and will ensure that UW can maintain a “competitive and increasingly profitable broadband proposition over the medium/long term as the shift to full fibre accelerates.”

Put another way, the new deal will enable UW to both continue to benefit from TalkTalk’s existing relationship with Openreach (i.e. ADSL, FTTC and FTTP products) and also their expanded availability across a number of alternative full fibre networks (altnets). Interestingly, this is said to include Cityfibre, CommunityFibre and Freedom Fibre (we haven’t seen mention of CommunityFibre working with TalkTalk before).

Tristia Harrison, CEO at TalkTalk said:

“Utility Warehouse is one of our longest standing and most significant wholesale customers. We are delighted to not only be extending this relationship but strengthening it to truly accelerate full fibre take up across the UK. As the UK’s largest wholesaler of fixed connectivity, we will be offering Utility Warehouse customers affordable access to our unrivalled full fibre network spanning multiple fibre builders. We look forward to this partnership continuing to go from strength to strength.”

Andrew Lindsay & Stuart Burnett, Co-CEOs of UW, said:

“With record numbers of new households turning to UW to save on their bills, our multi-service offering has never been more in demand. This new, long-term agreement with TalkTalk Group underpins the substantial growth opportunity in front of us, enabling us to offer market-leading fibre broadband pricing and service quality, alongside the UK’s cheapest energy and highly competitive mobile and insurance offerings.

At a time when cost of living pressures continue to rise, and other major broadband providers have been imposing substantial automatic inflation-linked price rises on their customers, we are proud to have not only maintained our existing competitive fibre broadband prices throughout 2022, but will also be freezing them throughout the winter.”

We’ll be keeping a close eye on UW to see how they handle the adoption of the aforementioned altnets into their packages, since differences between the networks and their costs can often result in the loss of a simple package and price structure.

In addition, we’re currently chasing TalkTalk to find out about their relationship with London provider CommunityFibre, which so far as we’re aware has not previously made its service available via other UK ISPs. We’re also unsure whether this extends to CF’s sibling network, Box Broadband.