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Articles for Category Tag - TalkTalk

Investment Firm KKR Gives Broadband ISP TalkTalk a £75m Boost

11th September, 2023 (3 Comments)

Budget UK ISP TalkTalk, which is currently already in the process of trying to deal with pressure from its existing debts by selling off parts of their business (here and here), managed to secure some vital support at the end of last week after global investment firm KKR agreed to provide them with a £75m non-recourse financing facility.

Broadband ISP TalkTalk Start FREE Automatic UK FTTP Upgrades

9th September, 2023 (90 Comments)

Back in 2022 we reported that budget UK broadband ISP TalkTalk was running a new trial (here), which gave “some” existing customers a free automatic upgrade to full fibre (FTTP) broadband – provided they were covered by the network and didn’t already have such a package. But fast-forward 13 months and this is no longer just a trial.

Telecom Acquisitions ISPs Gain Access to MS3’s UK Fibre Network

6th September, 2023 (1 Comment)

Network operator MS3, which is deploying a 10Gbps capable full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 535,000 premises across the North of England by the end of 2025 (here), has today announced that several ISPs managed under the central Telecom Acquisitions (TAL) group have gained access to their network.

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Freedom Fibre CEO Talks Future UK FTTP Rollout Challenges

26th August, 2023 (9 Comments)

The CEO of alternative broadband network builder Freedom Fibre, Neil McArthur, has today – as part of an exclusive interview with ISPreview – spoken about some of the challenges the operator has faced in building a new full fibre (FTTP) network and called on the government to be more overtly supportive of such efforts.

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What is “Fibre” Broadband? UK ISPs Respond to Ofcom’s Call for Clarity

22nd August, 2023 (56 Comments)

A few months ago Ofcom launched a new consultation that proposed to only allow broadband ISPs to use the terms “fibre” and “full-fibre” on their sites and in contracts “if their network uses fibre-optic cables all the way from the exchange to the home” (FTTP). But feedback suggests that the biggest providers are not supportive.

Mobile giant Vodafone UK and Sky (Comcast) have reportedly two among several "groups" that have approached budget conscious fixed broadband ISP TalkTalk about a potential deal (most likely an acquisition), which in theory could create a much larger provider with more influence over the industry. Just to recap. In 2020 TalkTalk became the subject of a £1.1bn takeover by Toscafund - controlled by hedge fund tycoon Martin Hughes (here), which including debt valued the broadband provider at around £1.8bn. The deal took the ISP private and gave them more financial flexibility for their future plans. Since then, they've backed Freedom Fibre (here) and this week made the notable acquisition of Ethernet provider Virtual1 (here). According to the FT (paywall) and Sky News, TalkTalk is now said to have asked investment bank Lazard to review its options after allegedly being approach by several groups, including Vodafone and Sky (Sky Broadband). Lazard is a logical choice as they recently acted as Financial Advisor to TalkTalk on the Virtual1 transaction. Some industry analysts have reportedly suggested that TalkTalk itself could now be worth "at least" £3bn. But this seems rather optimistic for an ISP that doesn't have any significant fixed line broadband infrastructure to call its own (excluding their old unbundled LLU network) and largely just piggybacks off Openreach (BT), CityFibre and Freedom Fibre. But TalkTalk do have a strong business and wholesale side. Funnily enough, Sky Broadband are in a similar position with their own fixed line base, while Vodafone also likes to piggyback off Openreach and CityFibre. At present, Vodafone has a fixed broadband base of 991,000 customers, while Sky Broadband is estimated to be home to around 6.7 million and TalkTalk has approximately 4.2 million. Suffice to say, anybody gobbling up TalkTalk would instantly become a much larger provider, giving them a greater say in how the UK broadband market develops and more opportunities for convergence (Vodafone with mobile, and Sky with mobile and TV). Crucially, TalkTalk's consumer base is mostly made up of those on older copper and hybrid fibre lines (i.e. ADSL and FTTC / VDSL2), which are ripe for a future migration to FTTP. At the time of writing, all of the aforementioned operators have decline to comment on the reports, and TalkTalk has yet to receive any serious formal offers. In other words, we strongly suspect that this is largely just an exercise in spin to help TalkTalk drum up some more productive interest in the idea. But at the same time, it's not unreasonable to suspect that they might succeed, as the interest seems genuine. On the other hand, we see reports like this every year or so and only a very few ever convert into a serious offer. Time will tell. Much may depend upon whether or not TalkTalk’s new owners are more flexible and pragmatic about doing a deal than the previous lot. Arguably, TalkTalk might have gone much further by now had they taken some different decisions a few years ago (e.g. co-investing in FTTP instead of Pay TV).

Complaints Prompt UK ISP TalkTalk to Suspend Doorstep Sellers in Newcastle

17th August, 2023 (4 Comments)

Budget focused broadband ISP TalkTalk has “suspended all door-to-door sales activity” in the Newcastle area after residents complained about cold calling occurring in parts of the city designated as a No Cold Calling Zone (NCCZ), which should be fairly self-explanatory to everybody, if not so much the sellers themselves, apparently.

UK ISP Sky Business Sniff Possible Acquisition of TalkTalk B2B Division

14th August, 2023 (8 Comments)

A new report claims that Sky Broadband’s business division, Sky Business (formerly Sky Connect), has joined Daisy Group and a couple of other interested parties in potentially gobbling up TalkTalk’s business-to-business arm (TT Business Direct Limited) within the next month or two, which is predicted to attract a value of around £150m.

Full Fibre Confusion Continues for TalkTalk Users in Rural Cheshire

13th August, 2023 (12 Comments)

A few months ago we reported (here) on how residents in two Cheshire villages had been mistakenly been told by UK ISP TalkTalk that their full fibre (FTTP) broadband service – under the old UltraFibreOptic (UFO) platform – was about to be disconnected. But unfortunately, the provider seems not to have learnt its lesson.

Fitch Downgrades TalkTalk’s Long-Term Issuer Default Rating to B-

9th August, 2023 (11 Comments)

American credit rating agency Fitch has downgraded TalkTalk’s Long-Term Issuer Default Rating to B- from B and put the UK broadband ISP on Rating Watch Negative (RWN). The move follows recent confirmation that the internet provider, under pressure from its debts, is to be broken up and sold off in pieces (here).

TalkTalk Extends UK Partnership with Business ISP Gamma

4th August, 2023 (6 Comments)

The wholesale division of broadband ISP TalkTalk has this week announced that they’ve signed a new agreement with business provider Gamma Communications, which will extend their existing “25-year partnership” to run for another three years until at least April 2026.

Debt Pressures Pushing Budget UK ISP TalkTalk Toward Breakup

30th July, 2023 (50 Comments)

A new report highlights how a £330m revolving credit facility that matures next November, £685m worth of debt maturing in February 2025, higher borrowing costs and last year’s failure to agree a £3bn takeover by Virgin Media (here) has left broadband ISP TalkTalk with few options, and a break-up of the business is now expected.

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TalkTalk Tops Ofcom’s Broadband Complaints Table for Q1 2023 UPDATE

27th July, 2023 (11 Comments)

Ofcom’s latest quarterly (Q1 2023) study of UK consumer complaints has named and shamed TalkTalk for attracting the most consumer gripes about both fixed line broadband and landline phone services (making a change from Shell Energy), while BT did the same for both Pay Monthly Mobile and Pay TV services.

Big UK Mobile and Broadband ISPs Commit to Cut Emissions

13th July, 2023 (1 Comment)

The Digital Connectivity Forum (DCF), an industry think-tank, has today announced that the UK’s largest mobile and broadband providers, including BT, Three UK, and Sky Broadband, among many others, have agreed to work together to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the telecoms supply chain.

Study Claims Sky Has Most Confusing UK Broadband Contract of Big ISPs

12th July, 2023 (5 Comments)

A new study by Uswitch, which adopted a Flesch–Kincaid readability test to examine the Terms & Conditions (T&Cs) of all the major UK broadband ISPs, has concluded that Sky Broadband’s terms are the “trickiest” for customers to understand. On the other hand, Plusnet’s terms were found to be the “most straightforward“.

Survey Claims 53% of UK Broadband Users Suffer Connection Woes UPDATE

4th July, 2023 (9 Comments)

A new survey of 3,975 UK people who had a contract for a home broadband ISP in December 2022 and January 2023, which was conducted by Which?, has found that 53% have experienced “connection issues” in the past year (e.g. very slow speeds, connection drop-outs etc.) and Sky Broadband were the worst offender.

Top Fastest UK Mobile and Home Broadband ISPs for H1 2023

24th June, 2023 (22 Comments)

We take a quick look back to see how the average UK broadband download and upload speeds have changed across the fastest nationally available fixed line ISPs and mobile operators over the past six months. Suffice to say, the growing coverage of gigabit-capable fixed line and 5G networks continues to push performance.

Netflix Account Sharing Add-on Blocked by UK ISP Pay TV Bundles

30th May, 2023 (10 Comments)

Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing in the UK has finally revealed why they needed to discuss the matter with several major UK broadband ISPs (i.e. those that bundle their service with Pay TV products), including Sky Broadband, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk (here). The new extra member and profile transfer features won’t work on such packages.