Opus Broadband allegedly tables £100m offer for broadband ISP TalkTalk
A new report claims that UK ISP Opus Broadband, which was previously reported to have been working with investment firm Alchemy Partners on a potential c.£250m bid for TalkTalk’s consumer business, before later walking away, has now allegedly tabled a cut price bid of around £100m for the debt-strained internet provider.
The offer, which Sky News said today was unlikely to be accepted by TalkTalk’s Board, reflects the extremely difficult situation that the wider Group now finds itself in. As reported last week, existing investor Ares Management is instead said to be positioning itself to take long-term ownership of the consumer business.
Meanwhile the Group’s efforts to sell their wholesale business – PXC – also ran into difficulties this week after lead bidder Octopus Investments retreated. One key difficulty is that TalkTalk’s consumer business is strongly linked to PXC’s wholesale products, thus any deal for one side of the business or the other would require some agreement on how that relationship continues into the future.
Advertisement
The group is currently said to have until the end of September 2026 to resolve its future, which is partly because another big payment to Openreach (BT) will become due around then – something that might require a further injection of funding from Ares. The worst-case scenario would be a collapse, which seems unlikely but might otherwise trigger a tedious Supplier of Last Resort (SoLR) process; not the first time such a thing has been discussed (here).
The OTA has previously sketched out a limited SoLR process to help protect customers in the event of a big failure, but it’s largely untested at this scale. Previous reports have suggested that BT could potentially take on TalkTalk’s base, but rescuing upwards of 1.5-1.7 million customers could create resource problems for even an ISP of BT’s scale. This is before we consider the likely competition concerns of such an outcome and the huge complexity of TalkTalk’s wider arrangements with alternative networks etc. (BT doesn’t use altnets, only Openreach).
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.
« nPerf study names EE best for 4G and 5G mobile coverage in the UK
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
Does the Secretary of State for Business and Trade have the necessary powers to direct the Official Receiver to run the business, at east pro tem’, to ensure continuity of service for customers, until such time as a SoLR process can be implemented?
When I say “implemented”, I mean “cobbled together” of course.
I imagine such a process would be handled by Ofcom without the government getting directly involved.
@Big Dave
Except that we already know (from one of Mark’s previous articles I think) that Ofcom themselves don’t have ANY statutory powers to implement a SoLR transfer, in the way that Ofgem do, in the event of an energy supplier becoming insolvent.
If one of TalkTalk’s creditors went to court, seeking an Administration Order or Winding-up Order, there’s nothing Ofcom could do to delay the process.
The High Court, the Official Receiver and the Insolvency Service have to act, solely, in the interests of the creditors, they are not allowed to “keep the lights on” for the benefit of a company’s customers.
My question remains; does the Secretary of State have any power to intervene?
What is the long term vision here for talktalk?
Normally when companies have thee kind of financial problems they sell off business units to focus on the underlying core business which may be profitable.
Here they are selling business units that are literally the main business – the wholesale and retail parts.
Surely all that is left is a massive debt and no business?
TalkTalk should absolutely take this offer.
Is that “m” on the end of £100 a typo?