VodafoneThree Allegedly Places Bid for UK Consumer Broadband ISP TalkTalk
A new report claims that broadband and mobile giant Vodafone (VodafoneThree) has made an offer to acquire the consumer internet and phone business of debt-strained rival TalkTalk (home to 1.75 million customers as of May 2026), which could turn them into a much bigger fixed line ISP (Vodafone has 1.83m fixed broadband customers).
Regular readers will already be aware that the TalkTalk Group has reportedly been engaging in talks with several prospective bidders for their various divisions since around the start of this year (here). At the same time the consumer side of their business has been through a major brand refresh and advertising push in an attempt to try and entice customers back to their refreshed products (here), while continuing to cut costs as part of efforts to tackle the group’s underlying debt problems.
According to a new report in the FT (paywall), VodafoneThree has now tabled a bid for TalkTalk’s consumer broadband and phone business, which could in theory create a single provider with around 3.6 million broadband customers.
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A spokesperson for VodafoneThree, however, said they are currently “very happy with our organic strategy” for growing fixed broadband (they’re one of the fastest growing retail ISPs), but would “always keep a close eye on movements in the market and the sector“. TalkTalk itself declined to comment.
The potential for a deal between VodafoneThree and TalkTalk would appear to make sense, as they both harness several alternative broadband networks and tend to target more cost-conscious consumers with cheaper bundles. At the same time the TalkTalk Group are still seeking a buyer for their PXC wholesale division, although we’ve yet to see any solid developments on that for the past few months.
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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Good. TalkTalks reputation is in the gutter and the only way they can be of any use to anyone is being bought and used for their infrastructure.
It looks like the gloves are off in the telecoms sector with Telefonica/O2 possibly about to swallow Virgin Media and rebrand the whole outfit as O2, if VodaThree buy TalkTalk it will mean all the existing mobile providers will have fixed line broadband networks. I guess this was always the long term goal.