Broadband ISP TalkTalk Sells 120,000 UK Customers to Rise Fibre UPDATE
Debt-strained UK ISP TalkTalk has unexpectedly sold a further 120,000 of their consumer broadband customers to the relatively new internet provider Rise Fibre, which is backed by private equity firm CVC and is a trading name of the more established alternative network and ISP 4th Utility. But the deal raises questions over TT’s plan to sell their consumer division.
The TalkTalk Group has certainly had a difficult few years as it attempts to manage an increasingly challenging pile of debt. So far this has included various refinancing efforts and funding deals (here, here and here), redundancies (here and here), a fair bit of cost-cutting, a demerger of their businesses (Talk Talk Consumer, PXC [Wholesale] and Talk Talk Business Direct), a major brand refresh of their consumer division, a legal dispute with Ovo (here), a sale of some customers to UW (here), supplier disputes (here) and ongoing efforts to sell some of their businesses (here and here).
The latest development is that rival ISP Rise Fibre, which typically serves customers on CityFibre’s and Openreach’s national full fibre (FTTP) broadband networks (4th Utility also has their own fibre network for deployments into blocks of flats / MDUs etc.), has done a deal to acquire 120,000 of TalkTalk’s broadband customers (seemingly those connected via CityFibre).
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According to The Telegraph (paywall), the move will effectively more than double Rise Fibre’s subscriber base to almost 250,000 (they aspire to reach 1 million UK customers), which is a significant development for such a new retail provider. But the financial details of the deal were not disclosed and TalkTalk declined to comment.
Steve Wilson, CEO of Rise Fibre, said:
“This is far more than an acquisition. It marks another major step in the emergence of a genuine new challenger in UK broadband.
Customers have been telling the industry for years that they want something different — better service, simpler products and a provider that’s genuinely easy to deal with. That’s exactly why we created Rise Fibre.
Reaching almost a quarter of a million customers so quickly shows that our approach is resonating. The TalkTalk acquisition significantly accelerates that journey, but we’re only getting started.
We have ambitious plans to continue growing through further acquisitions and strong organic performance as we build the UK’s fastest-growing broadband provider. Our long-term ambition is clear: to serve more than one million customers while continuing to put customer experience at the heart of everything we do.”
The agreement does, however, raise question marks over the value of TalkTalk’s remaining customer base and its prospects for reaching a future deal to sell the whole business. As mentioned earlier, Vodafone were recently reported to have expressed a serious interest in the group’s consumer base (here), although nothing has been officially confirmed. Equally, it’s unclear whether this would involve the whole business (brand, customers, support teams etc.) or just its remaining customer base.
At present we’re waiting for TalkTalk to publish their latest annual results, which should provide a useful update on their position. But the Telegraph notes that the group did already share a few details with investors, which reported revenues falling by 15% in the first quarter of the financial year to £292m, while their retail customer base fell to 1.6 million (down by a quarter on last year) and they burned through £58m in the same quarter.
In recent months TalkTalk has also paused the sale of some broadband and digital phone products to new customers (here and here), while also unexpectedly shutting down their customer discussion forum for well over a month without a clear explanation or timescale for its return (here).
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UPDATE 8:21am
Rise Fibre has now issued an official press release on the development, which puts the figure at “approximately” 120,000 rather than 130,000 (we assume the Telegraph rounded up) and provides a fuller quote from the CEO (edited above). The news also confirms that Rise Fibre make use of networks from Openreach (BT), CityFibre, CommunityFibre, Trooli, Freedom Fibre and 4th Utility.
Behind Rise Fibre’s growth is said to be “significant long-term investment” from CVC DIF, the infrastructure strategy of leading global private markets manager CVC, which has provided additional funding during both 2025 and 2026 to support acquisitions and future expansion. The business is now said to be “profitable, cash generative and well-positioned to accelerate further growth“.
The company has also expanded its operations rapidly. Headcount has tripled over the past two years, creating more than 120 new UK jobs, alongside additional roles supporting customers from South Africa. Following a move to a larger headquarters in Greater Manchester in 2025, the business expanded the office again earlier this year to accommodate continued recruitment.
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One challenge in all this is that some businesses often suffer challenges when they expand faster than the rest of their parts can maintain. Hopefully Rise Fibre has already prepared for that, otherwise it can sometimes create pain points in service quality and 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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So of CF’s 1m connections it looks like they’re really heavily weighted into 3 operators
330k Voda – as per vodafone results
250K Rise – as per this article
100-150K Sky – estimated guesswork
68%-75% of CF’s connections with just three customers – seems high risk
There’s not that many large ISPs. Probably Talk Talk have a chunk as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if Openreach looks similar except for the addition of the BT ISPs which will never use CityFibre.
How do you know it’s the CF network customers that have been sold?
What an odd thing for TalkTalk to do. I’m not sure how them selling off part of their base makes them attractive to buy
Lucky escape for those customers, it’s probably better to get sold off now rather than have your isp go bust later.
Steve Wilson of Rise Fibre sounds very much like ChatGPT!
Ah TalkTalk… they’re like the telco version of long COVID.
Probably good to take a moment to remember they’re the masters of smoke and mirrors.
They “sold off” their TalkTalk Business to their own investors just so they could split it away from the rest debt-ridden group. They then spent money creating new brands for TalkTalk and PXC (their artists formerly known as TalkTalk wholesale) so they could pretend they were two seperate businesses and not the same old mis-managed TalkTalk Group.
Which is why I wonder why they keep talking about selling the different parts of the company. Who is going to buy a company that is in so much debt? This is why it seems to make sense when you read they sell off chunks of their customer base every other month. The customers are the only asset they have that’s worth anything to anyone. I’m sure whatever they make selling off the customer base will be used to pay towards their debts.
TalkTalk seem to have got rid of most of their staff now so I wouldn’t hold out for the return of a customer forum. The people who run it are likely not there anymore. TalkTalk also really raved about their move to their new Kraken systems. They made it clear that they weren’t system people, that they needed third parties in order to make the migration a success. Only problem was, they let the same people who messed up their legacy systems lead on the design of the new Kraken systems. So that was sadly never going to be a success and I’m sure, all the stories that you refer to where TalkTalk are no longer able to sell certain products and services link to exactly that.
As one of the other commentators say, it’s a lucky escape for customers who are being migrated. But no-one should worry, the wholesale providers have plans in place to ensure customers aren’t impacted in the scenario where an internet company goes bust. So long as you’re on full fibre, they can have you switched and/or reconnected to a new internet company in less than a day.
It’s the staff I feel sorry for… they’re likely rearranging the deckchairs from morning till night.
You’re mixing a few basic news headlines with pure armchair guesswork here.
First off, the demerger isn’t ‘smoke and mirrors.’ PXC and TalkTalk Consumer operate as distinctly separate entities with different leadership teams. It’s standard corporate restructuring to separate high-value wholesale assets from consumer operations. As for who would buy them, considering PXC received multiple bids in mid-2026 and the group secured a major refinancing package extending maturities to 2027 with a £235m funding injection, the market clearly sees the value.
Your take on the systems migration is also way off the mark. Claiming the ‘same old employees’ are designing it is just unverified gossip. Kraken is a proven cloud platform built by Octopus Energy that already runs over 70 million accounts globally. Migrating millions of users onto it is a massive, complex integration managed alongside third-party tech experts, not just a few legacy staff winging it.
Finally, writing off the staff as just ‘rearranging deckchairs’ completely ignores the actual operational efficiency and automation improvements being actively driven across the wholesale side right now. You don’t have to love the brand, but presenting wild guesses about internal workflows, vendor integrations, and HR structures as absolute facts is a massive stretch.
I think you’ve touched a nerve
Still CGNAT only I believe. So CommunityFibre users remain stuffed
Hello, does anyone know if this will allow us to leave our contracts without penalty?
Probably not, but Rise will have to honour your existing terms & conditions until the end of your current contract otherwise they would be required to offer you a penalty free release.