Cost Cutting Sees UK ISP TalkTalk Scale Back Support for Internet Matters
Debt-troubled UK broadband provider TalkTalk has reportedly “pulled out” of industry-funded online child safety charity Internet Matters, which was established alongside BT, Virgin Media and Sky Broadband during 2014. The move is said to form part of the ISP’s efforts to cut £120m in costs and follows recent job cuts (here).
The latest move ultimately flows from last year’s decision to accept a refinancing package worth roughly £400m (here and here), which saved TalkTalk from the immediate risk of a default on its debts. The deal essentially extended the group’s debt maturities to September 2027 and brought them more time to fix the foundations or find a buyer for their various companies, which won’t be an easy task (here).
At the same time, TalkTalk’s most recent financial results (here) revealed that their on-net customer base (fibre FTTP/C and broadband) had fallen again to 3.6 million (down from 3.94m in 2023), although their Ethernet (leased lines etc.) base grew to 75,000 (up from 69,400). Suffice to say that recent developments mean the provider is having to find ever deeper ways of cutting costs in order to stay afloat.
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According to a report on the Telegraph (paywall), the founding members of ‘Internet Matters’ are understood to pay an annual membership fee of roughly £300,000. This may be just a drop in the ocean of TalkTalk’s debt, but it’s a drop they clearly need.
A TalkTalk spokesman said:
“TalkTalk is proud to be one of the founders of Internet Matters, having financially supported the organisation for the past decade. We remain committed to online safety and are exploring different ways of continuing to support Internet Matters and its work moving forward.”
Interestingly, the newspaper indicates that the charity’s other backers may not currently be minded to increase their contributions in order to cover the loss of TalkTalk’s support.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Wasn’t their support awful already? Good luck to their customers
If I remember correctly, the ISP TalkTalk grew a large customer base by acquiring smaller ISP’s (funded by Carphone Warehouse?) and cheap subs but at the expense of poor customer service (ISPreview passim). Plainly they reaping the effects of the latter by folk jumping ship for ISP’s nearly as cheap but better quality(?). Also, it seems that the cut in expense on advertising doesn’t help – there ain’t the tedious EE, Plusnet, et. al. banging on every 5 minutes!
Brief history of Opal Telecom and CPW:
1995 Opal Telecom founded.
2002 Opal acquired by CPW for £103m
2005 Vartec, Telequip and Onetel acquired
2006 AOL, EcoCall and Totem acquired
2006 CPW acquire Tulketh Mill Preston
2009 TalkTalk demerges from CPW
2010 TalkTalk acquires Tiscali, Opal becomes TalkTalk Business to leverage brand
2011 TalkTalk Business acquire Executel and V-Networks
2011 TalkTalk closes AOL Waterford contact centre
2012 TalkTalk closes Vartec Northampton contact centre
2015 TalkTalk closes Tiscali Stevenage contact centre
2015 TalkTalk acquires Tesco Broadband
2019 TalkTalk closes Onetel Stornoway contact centre
2020 Toscafund takeover
2021 Acquires Origin Broadband
2022 Acquires Virtual1
2022 Dixons Carphone no longer have any operations in Tulketh Mill Preston.
Talk talk is screwing people over everyday trying to recover losses.
Talk talk is guilty of trying to make customers fit the bill for their mistakes.
Do not apply for talk talk Broadband under no circumstance.
Meritez – Didn’t they also acquire Virgin.net’s Openreach customers?
Ed, might be worth having a full discussion on the ISPreview forums than adding comments here.
@Meritez
Dont forget Pipex and Fredom 2 Surf (who were great, sadly butchered by TTB).
I had many years with TTb as an absorbed F2S user, with a brief interlude to TT, fortunately fully refunded after some 9 months of trying to get Talktalk to actually talk to Talktalk Business, and back to TTB who were more competent back then.
After declining service since eventually being able to get fftc, and TTB no more, just with another ‘affordable’ business arm of a big supplier. So Im’m just a pesky consumer expecting some (sadly lacking) and frankly appalling consumer focussed Ofcom ‘regulation’. Recent experince including of Ofcom, way worse thatn when with F2S, so can only say the only progress ‘improvement’ is in devolution rather than evolution of any service culture.
I wouldn’t wish dealing with TalkTalk or Vodafone on my worst enemy.
I started with talktalk in 2020, iv had to contact them once,last month. My internet stopped working,had a live chat with them, they were here the next day, kept me informed by text when they were arriving,and they were there when they said they would.
I must be one of the lucky ones.
Great sevice for £24 a month.
I agree. I have been with talktalk for as long as I can remember and I must also be a lucky customer as I rarely in all that time had any problem with my broadband or quality of service
Disgraceful service robbing elderly wanting a stake in your bank account every month. Overcharged is their specialty to recover losses.
Beware of talk talk
Not surprising numbers are falling, I couldn’t/wouldn’t join them even if I wanted to. I’ve had City Fibre 900mbps with Vodafone for over 3 years now but the Talktalk site still doesn’t recognise it and offers me a max of 65mbps. When you do an address checker with CityFibre themselves it says talktalk fttp is available but when you click through to talktalk it only offers fttc 65mbps.