The latest trading update from TalkTalk has revealed that the ISP increased their on-net broadband customers to total 4,243,000, which is up by +24K during quarter to the end of Sept 2018 (vs +80k in the previous quarter). On top of that they’ve unveiled the “FibreNation” roll-out plan for their “full fibre” (FTTH) network.
The past quarter has been a quiet one for the low cost ISP. So far the only real development of note was their decision to introduce a Great Connection Guaranteefor new customers of their FTTC based “Faster Fibre” broadband services, which essentially enables customers to leave penalty free within the first 30 days of their service going live “if they’re not fully satisfied” (here).
Otherwise the provider today reported that they added +192,000 new “fibre” customers during the past six months (up from +188k in the previous 6 months). Overall 54% of their new customers are choosing to take a fibre service (up from 44%), although we should remind readers that this is dominated by their Openreach based FTTC (hybrid fibre VDSL2) network and only a small FTTP deployment in York.
At the start of this year TalkTalk also announced tentative plans to roll-out a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network to 3 million UK premises, which was supported by an investment £1.5bn (here). This required them to establish a new company, which would be 20% owned by TalkTalk and 80% by Infracapital; the latter will contribute £400m and TalkTalk £100m (plus they will then take on c.£1bn in debt).
Sadly the provider has been almost completely silent on this proposal since it was announced, but today’s report confirms a number of significant developments.
The ISP added that they continue to pursue a “Fibre for Everyone” strategy, which in the short-term means “materially increasing” the proportion of their base on superfast FTTC products and “[we] are also positioned to be an early adopter of future products, such as G.Fast and Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA). We made good progress with our G.Fast trial in H1 and are actively engaged with Openreach to ensure SOGEA products are priced to enable fast adoption.”
On top of all this TalkTalk has also announced that it plans to relocate its headquarters from London to Salford (Manchester) to support its next phase of growth (they already have an office in Salford at their Soapworks site and this is due to be expanded), which will affect “several hundred” staff (we think up to 500) but also enable the ISP to reduce some of their costs. The vast majority of London roles will relocate to Salford in 2019.