Telecom Acquisitions UK Gobbles Eze Talk Home Broadband Users UPDATE

The Horsham-based Telecom Acquisitions Group (TAL), which is a holding company for several familiar UK residential ISP brands (Home Telecom, No One and Eclipse Broadband etc.), has today acquired yet another broadband customer base, this time from little known ISP brand Eze Talk Residential.

Just to be clear. Eze Talk is currently adopting more of a business focus, and TAL will acquire only Eze Talk Residential’s 2,750 strong base of residential customers. In the last 15 months to February 2024, TAL have grown to circa 100,000 customers, while returning a £40m turnover, and this latest acquisition adds to that.

The TAL Group added that it is continuing to negotiate with other prominent alternative networks and ISPs for further expansion during the course of 2024. The company is also supporting this via an ongoing marketing deal to help boost take-up and bring its brand to houses on the footprints of CityFibre’s full fibre network across the UK, which complements existing arrangements with other networks (e.g. MS3, FullFibre and Freedom Fibre).

Nigel Barnett, TAL’s CEO, said:

“More and more ISPs and network providers like Eze Talk have found that servicing residential connections is time consuming and a drain on resources. We have a formula that works, which is backed up by scores of 4.5 stars including 10,700 reviews on Trust Pilot.

Eze Talk Residential was part of the very successful Eze Talk Group that has been established 22 years and is serious player in the B2B space. Eze Talk Residential is a traditional telephony base including lines, calls, broadband and all the BT services that go with it.

Personally, this acquisition means a lot to me, as Eze Talk helped me with the residential sector when we first setup 13 years ago. The family have really established themselves in the B2B sector and their trust in us taking over their residential side means a lot. There are so many synergies between the companies our relationship will grow even stronger.”

Mike Walsh, Eze Talk Managing Director, said:

“Residential business in our early days was the main stay of our business, but as we are all aware markets change and many years ago, we decided B2B was a more sustainable route for the future. Nigel is a character in our industry and hats off to a man that has put circa 100,000 customers together in four short years and we feel comfortable that our customers will be in excellent hands.”

The announcement doesn’t mention much about the customer side of this deal, but TAL’s past migrations have tended to broadly respect existing package details and prices, albeit sometimes with the odd change.

UPDATE 11:44am

TAL has confirmed to ISPreview that all customer terms and conditions will remain the same. The company also clarified that in this case they actually purchased the company, not just the customer assets.