TalkTalk Group Shrinks to 3.2 Million UK Broadband ISP Customers
A new preview of the TalkTalk group’s next set of annual accounts has reportedly revealed that the UK internet provider is continuing to haemorrhage broadband customers. The latest figure puts them at around 3.2 million customers as of February 2025 (down from 3.6m last year).
The Salford-based group has had a rough few years and only recently secured a refinancing package worth around £400m (here and here), which saved it from the immediate risk of a default on its debts. But this does tend to make staying competitive and attractive with the rest of the market more of a challenge, since such things tend to require more investment (hard to do when cutting back still seems to be the order of the day).
At the same time, TalkTalk, much like many other established players, has been facing pressure from a new generation of competitively priced alternative networks. According to a new report in the FT (paywall), the group reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of £128m (down from £157m last year) and revenues fell 7% to £1.4bn (these are expected come in at c. £1.25bn to £1.35bn in the coming year).
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James Smith, Group CEO, told ISPreview:
“In the last year broadband bases were lower on disciplined capital allocation, we saw steady growth in our Ethernet business, and significant actions on cost delivered improved cash generation.
For the current year, we remain focused on strengthening cashflows: delivering an accelerated transition to fibre-only network in our PXC business, and a focus on retention, simplification and a new product offering in TalkTalk consumer.”
However, despite the challenges, the embattled internet service provider is said to be planning a consumer-focused product refresh. But it’s currently unclear when this will be introduced or what it might deliver to help revitalise the brand.
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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If your only selling point is that you’re the cheapest, and then you cease to be the cheapest, what did their leadership think was going to happen?
In fairness their tech is far from the worst AS13285 has pretty extensive peering and they use IPoE as opposed to PPPoE. If they did IPv6 then I might even go so far as to recommend them…
@Ben Indeed, technically they are very good but the support is just so terrible. TalkTalk Business is quite good though.
@Ben
I’m curious, why is IPv6 a deal breaker for you? Do they use CGNAT?
@alex TalkTalk business phone support is shockingly bad based in Pakistan, once you get a call back from the UK that is adequate but I wouldn’t say it’s good.
@tech3475 – no, TalkTalk don’t use CGNAT
The business no one wants to buy. Terminal decline is assured at this point. Feel sorry for those who hang around to the bitter end.
I have 900mb FTTP from them with the eero routers – I must say it’s been rock solid for over a year. Years ago on FTTC they were horrific in the same building.
I have used their FTTC years ago only because they were the cheapest on the market. On their FTTP they provide decent Eero Pro 6 triple band mesh. I really would have gone with them but their prices are crazy..they want £35 for 500Mbs where other ISP on Openreach offer under £30.
Give it while, that James Smith might just trade them out of their financial hole. Especially if the remaining staff pull their weight. In the mean time dont make me angry, you won’t like me when I am angry.
never really recovered from the 2015 data hack and dido hardings stewardship. Charles came back in hoping for a sale but that will never happen now as any prospective buyer will just wait for the inevitable to happen and cherrypick the assets at rock bottom prices. Last tentative interest was vm02 who walked away.
Should never have been taken private with toscafund. A shame i quite like Charles dunstone. He should never have come back in but he was majority shareholder what was he going to do
I went off them years ago when they offered so-called free broadband, when it was still owned by Carphone warehouse. Never used them myself, but I remember that they could not cope and people had all sorts of problems. Over the years, I have had to deal with them on behalf of other people, mainly on ADSL, but also a couple on VDSL
I did think about changing to them once, but thought, no, I can’t cope with the hassle if there is a problem. They did start getting better with VDSL and I presume reliability is better with fibre. A lot of the problem was that their service could not cope, nothing to do with the network.
The hacking was bad, he was a teenager or close to it. What also annoyed me was their reps in the town centre, they were literally running after people, one of them blocked my path, I told him straight, that I would not go to an ISP who have been hacked by a teenager.
Not seen them in town for a couple of years or so, but then I don’t into town so much these days.
Price wise, they have never been that much cheaper if they were ever cheaper, apart from the free internet thing years ago. They worked out a couple of quid or so below Plusnet for VDSL.
I am sure there are people that uses them that are happy with them.
It is no surprise that they are losing customers, certainly now with alt nets.
How much of their profitability problem could be attributed to the OFCOM regulation of their main network provider, OpenReach’s wholesale prices?
Whilst competition is great for overall prices, and the rules are there to support AltNets against anticompetitive activities by the big boys, it’s no use if it takes out the many ISPs selling those incumbent networks.
Other providers manage and have done for years.
Different times now, people have more choice,
Broadband providers should concentrate on broadband and not try to offer everything, that is the problem with a lot of ISPs,
even the one I was with for 9 years have decided to just be a provider of broadband and dropped their TV and mobile phone service (Plusnet)
We’re also forgetting about the impending fine for the latest data hack. That’ll be the end I reckon.
This doesn’t surprise me one bit. Was a customer of theirs in the 2010s, customer support was awfull. And service would drop out. Although this was in the adsl years so I thought things had improved with Gigabit fibre? Glad I’d left by the time of the hacking incident
I’m not surprised, I couldn’t join them even if I wanted too, I’ve had CityFibre (vodafone) for 3.5yrs now, the cityfibre site says talktalk is available, I click through to the talktalk site and it only offered vdsl upto 50mbps and has done the whole time. For the last few months it instead just says something went wrong please call us, nope, I’ll just order from someone else who wants me as a customer.