Debt plagued UK ISP TalkTalk has this afternoon confirmed that they’ve formally signed a binding agreement on detailed terms of the refinancing package, which was announced on 12th August 2024 (here) and is said to be worth around £400m. This extends the group’s debt maturities to September 2027 and buys them more time to fix the roof.

As previously reported, the deal saw TalkTalk’s shareholders – led by founder Sir Charles Dunstone, Toscafund and Ares Management – agree to immediately inject £65m into the company, with a further £170m to follow. This was complemented by an asset package (i.e. parts of the company normally held separately) worth roughly the same value to entice lenders, which bundled-in wholesaler Virtual1 and the customer bases acquired from SSE Broadband (Ovo) and Shell Energy (here).

The agreement came after the Group had already spent much of the past few years wrestling with its existing c.£1bn debt pile, which in 2023 culminated in a plan to demerge the group into three separate businesses (TalkTalk Consumer, TalkTalk Business Direct and the wholesale centric PlatformX Communications – here), while also cutting costs (e.g. marketing) and monetising some assets (e.g. selling IP addresses).

The demerger should have also made it easier to sell off individual parts of the business (selling the entire group has proven tricky) and the first piece to go was technically TalkTalk Business Direct, which ended up being sold to the company’s own shareholders for £95m after struggling to attract much interest (here). But so far there have been no further deals, and TalkTalk came dangerously close to defaulting on some of their debts.

The risk of a collapse has now subsided, but TalkTalk still has plenty of work to do in order to turn things around or find a concrete buyer for what remains.

TalkTalk Statement – 2nd Sept 2024

Further to the announcement on 12th August, the Company is pleased to announce that a binding agreement on detailed terms of the refinancing transaction has been reached regarding extension of the maturities of the Company’s secured debt, being Revolving Credit Facilities (“RCF”) maturing November 2024 and Senior Secured Notes (“SSN”) maturing February 2025.

The Company has entered into a binding lockup agreement in support of the transaction with its major shareholders, RCF banks and a group of SSN holders, which together hold approximately 70% of the Company’s secured debt.

The transaction will leave the Company well-funded to deliver the respective strategic plans of PlatformX Communications (PXC) and TalkTalk, continuing to capitalise on their strong positions in the market.

In conjunction with this binding agreement, the shareholders have over the weekend provided £170m of financing to the Group, in addition to the £65m provided in August.

As announced on August 12th, the agreed terms include:

Provision of £235m of funding from Shareholders in aggregate
The contribution of other assets into the Group by the Shareholders, including the Virtual1 business, and the OVO and Shell branded customer bases, and
The extension of the first RCF and SSN maturities to September 2027

The Company will now move to the implementation phase of the transaction which is expected to close in the next few months.

Residential customers of TalkTalk’s broadband service don’t need to be too concerned about all this, and indeed they would have been protected from service loss, even in the event of a collapse. But it is also true to say that the ISP doesn’t have as much financial flexibility as they once did, which potentially always runs the risk of having a negative impact on service and support quality.

News

Elon Musk’s clash with the Brazilian government over moderation of X (formerly Twitter) has resulted in a government ban on the platform

Volatile billionaire Elon Musk’s ongoing clash with the Brazilian government has this week seen his social media platform X banned across the country.

In addition, the sanctions appear to extend to SpaceX’s satellite constellation Starlink, with reports suggesting that the company’s Brazilian accounts have been frozen.

On April 6 this year, Elon Musk removed restrictions on a number of accounts on X that had been banned as the result of a Brazilian court order. These accounts were linked to the far-right and had been accused of repeatedly spreading misinformation on the platform.

Musk argued, however, that the court order to ban these accounts was “unconstitutional” and called on the overseeing Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, to “resign or be impeached”.

Moraes responded by once again reiterating the bans must be enforced, or the X platform itself risked being banned in Brazil. The country’s communications minister, Paulo Pimenta, voiced his support for the ban, saying that “social networks are not a lawless land“.

“We will not allow anyone, regardless of the money and power they have, to affront our homeland,” he said.

Musk responded to the government’s renewed requests by attacking Moraes in various X posts, including sharing derogatory AI-generated images of Moraes, one of which showed the Judge behind bars in a prison cell. He also closed the company’s Brazilian office, leaving the government without a legal interlocutor to resolve the issue.

As such, X was given until August 30 to appoint a new legal representative for Brazil, or else see the platform suspended.

Now, with the deadline passed, X has been banned in Brazil, leaving tens of millions of users disconnected.

In addition to direct impact on X, Brazilian courts have also frozen the accounts of Starlink, the satellite communications service run by SpaceX, also owned by Musk. The move renders the company unable to conduct financial transactions in Brazil.

SpaceX is planning an appeal against this ruling, arguing that the court order “is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X”.

Brazil is currently one of Starlink’s largest markets, with over 250,000 customers, many of whom live in such remote locations that Starlink is the only available form of internet connectivity.

The ongoing clash between Elon Musk and the Brazilian government is part of a wider clamp down on social media platforms all over the world, with regulators highlighting their ability to spread disinformation and threaten democracy. Last week, France arrested the owner and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, accusing him of being complicit in the platform’s facilitation of illicit transactions and distribution of sexual images of children by gangs, as well as a refusal to communicate with authorities.

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Also in the news:
Coastguard’s emergency network gets an upgrade from Telent
AT&T fined nearly $1m over 911 failings
How will the CityFibre–Sky deal really affect BT? 

News 

The network will be the first in the UK that is focused on understanding the impact of extreme weather conditions across the country 

The UK government has announced a new initiative to provide earlier warnings for devastating floods and droughts. Backed by £40 million, this project will use advanced technology and real-time monitoring to protect communities from the increasing threat of extreme weather. 

The project, led by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), will use sensors in rivers and a large data bank to predict where and when floods and droughts are likely to happen. By monitoring factors such as river levels, weather conditions, and ground saturation in real-time, scientists will create better models to forecast these events.  

This effort is designed to help local authorities and the Environment Agency prepare for and respond to extreme weather, reducing the damage and economic losses.  

The cost of flooding and droughts in the UK currently stands at £740 million each year. 

“This project will help drive that progress, with dedicated teams using the most advanced tech to crunch data gathered from our rivers and paint a clear picture of its likely impact – using the power of science and tech to keep the public safe,” said UK Science and Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle in a press release. 

The findings from this project will be shared globally to help other countries facing similar challenges with extreme weather. 

“Our new institute will bring together a team of world-leading researchers and the latest technology to ensure our communities, businesses and farms are protected from these devastating events,” said Emma Hardy, UK floods minister. 

Join Sir Chris Bryant, Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology on day 2 of Connected Britain, 11-12 September in London. Get tickets here. 

Also in the news:
Coastguard’s emergency network gets an upgrade from Telent
AT&T fined nearly $1m over 911 failings
How will the CityFibre–Sky deal really affect BT? 

The newly appointed CEO, Tom Rigg, of rural focused full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP B4RN has told Richard Tang, the boss of Zen Internet, in a new interview that their network now passes 27,000 premises in rural areas and is home to almost 14,000 customers. But they have no plans to “split everything off and then try and go wholesale” with the network.

Just to recap. B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) is a registered Community Benefit Society (i.e. they can’t be bought by a commercial operator – so consolidation is not an option – and profits go back into the community) that has already expanded their full fibre network to cover various remote rural parts of Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria, Northumberland, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Northumberland and County Durham.

As usual, Richard’s new interview with Tom starts by digging into the history of B4RN, which is a unique network where members of the local communities they serve have often helped to build the physical network in return for shares (dedicated civil engineering teams do the more complex bits). Due to this, the operator also keeps a strong focus on trying to connect everybody in their communities, including the hardest outlying properties: “It wouldn’t work if we just did the guys at the bottom of the hill,” quipped Tom.

At the same time, B4RN acknowledges that they’re still a smaller player, at least in terms of premises passed (geographically their network is huge) – “[our] build rate is nothing compared to what some of the big altnets are doing … it’s inherently slower in a rural build, it’s in the hundreds [premises] per month,” said Tom before adding, “and we’re ok with that.”

The above is also part of the reason why Tom doesn’t, at present, see much attraction in opening up their network to wholesale so that other retail ISPs can harness it. “It’s all around the economics, it would be very difficult for anybody to invest, and then what market share would they get … I don’t think we see a view where we would purposefully split everything off and then try and go wholesale.” This is a shame, albeit an understandable one.

The interview also touches on the tricky subject of overhead poles vs underground cable ducts, which is somewhat of a hot topic these days (here and here). B4RN has built their network underground, which is naturally a lot easier to do when much of your fibre can be laid across farm land (soft dig) and the countryside. But Tom notes some other examples of why this has worked so well for them.

“From a stats point of view (during Storm Desmond and others), we lost practically nothing in the fibre in these storms, and we kept the power on. But yeah, looking at all the rest of it [operators with overhead poles etc.], that infrastructure was just ‘shooooo’ [seriously damaged] across a wide area. From our experience, underground means it will stay on in extreme weather events,” explained Tom.

Finally, Tom doesn’t appear to be concerned about the risk of their network being overbuilt (Openreach currently only overbuilds a small percentage of their network with FTTP): “We believe there will still be people, who, nobody else is going to want to get to these.”

Tom added that half of B4RN’s market share is because there “really isn’t another operator” for people to choose in their patch, and the other half is because people are “buying into what we stand for” (B4RN has long managed to maintain an enviably high take-up rate that averages around 50%).

“I think it’s great [when homes have] a choice [of full fibre networks] … I don’t see a risk where [the business] will be eroded to the point where we’re unsustainable any more. I think there will always be a demand for that very deep rural connectivity and care of those connections,” said Tom. The full interview, which can be seen below, also touches on other areas like sharing cable ducts (PIA), Ofcom’s new broadband migration system (One Touch Switch), mid-contract price hikes and more..

Alternative network operator Open Fibre Networks Limited (OFNL / GTC / BUUK), which typically serves new build homes with gigabit fibre (FTTP) via several of their supporting UK broadband ISPs, appears to be suffering a major national outage this morning that is also making it difficult to access their Incidents Page.

The feedback received from some of OFNL’s customers this morning suggests that everything was working well until around 10am, when the service went down. The good news is that some of OFNL’s internet providers maintain their own service status pages (e.g. Seethelight’s status page), which confirm what their customers are saying. The operator has also been quick to acknowledge the outage.

318282: INCIDENT AFFECTING BROADBAND AND VOICE SERVICES Last updated:(02 Sep 2024 10:20hrs)

Status: Currently open.
Location: Network Wide.

We are currently experiencing a network incident affecting our entire network. Engineers are currently investigating the issue and will provide an update as soon as possible.Please do not reset your equipment.We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

No updates for this incident yet.

A number of broadband ISPs on their network are also advising customers not to “reset your equipment” (router), as this won’t resolve the current issue. Sources have told ISPreview that the issue might be related to Sky Backhaul (capacity links), but at the time of writing we don’t have any further information.

UPDATE 11:37am

The latest status update, as posted at 11:12am, provides a bit more detail: “We are aware that one of our core network suppliers is experiencing a major network incident that is affecting Internet performance over our network. We have implemented a work around in our core network that will help improve performance for some customers. Customers may still continue to experience a reduction in Internet performance and stability.”

Alternative broadband provider Gigaclear, which has built a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to cover 500,000 premises (RFS) in England (inc. 100,000 customers), has introduced a new range of discounts that rejigs their packages and prices for those placing an order during September 2024.

The promotion means that Gigaclear are now promoting three packages on their website, including a 300Mbps (symmetric speed) plan that costs just £19 per month on an 18-month term (£46 thereafter), as well as 400Mbps for £22 (£51 thereafter) and 900Mbps for £29 (£82 thereafter). The service also comes with free installation and an included Wi-Fi 6 router.

The provider is principally owned by major investor Infracapital, together with Equitix and Railpen. The company previously had investment commitments estimated to be worth up to around £1.1bn (here), although at the end of last year they also secured a new £1.5bn debt facility (here) and recently won the £16.6m Project Gigabit rollout contract for East Gloucestershire (here), as well as the contracts for North and South Oxfordshire (here).

Take note that, after the promotional period 31st August – 30th September 2024, the 400Mbps package priced at £22/month will not be available to order and the 900Mbps package will revert to £49/month.

Infracapital also owns or has stakes in WightFibre, Neos Networks, Fibrus and Ogi.

Broadband ISP Quickline, which is building a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and 5G powered fixed wireless access (FWA) network across rural and semi-rural parts of the North East and Midlands of England, will this morning significantly cut the prices on some of their packages and introduce symmetric speeds on their full fibre plans.

Just to recap. The network operator is currently being supported by funding of c.£500m from Northleaf Capital Partners, as well as c.£296.4m of public subsidy from Project Gigabit (here, here and here), £225m in term loans and debt guarantees from the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) and a £25m term loan from NatWest.

Quickline ultimately holds an aspiration to cover around 500,000 premises in rural and semi-rural areas across Northern England and beyond with “ultrafast broadband” – via both FTTP and wireless technologies – “by 2025” (here). Some 200,000 of those rural premises will be tackled by their wireless network, with the rest coming from FTTP.

The main development today is that the provider will be making some updates to their product offerings. For the first 12 months of a 24-month contract, all their packages will be 50% off, with the standard price resuming for the second half of the contract.

For example, customers in FTTP areas can get 200Mbps for £14.50 per month for the first year, while wireless customers can get 100Mbps for £14 per month for the same period. Additionally, they’ve introduced symmetrical upload and download speeds for their full fibre packages and increased the overall speeds available.

Ben O’Leary, Head of Product and Proposition at Quickline, said:

“Quickline is one of the UK’s fastest-growing broadband providers, offering an award-winning service that customers can trust.

At Quickline, we promise faster speeds, reliable connectivity, and year-long broadband savings, as well as our pledge not to hike prices midway through your contract.

Plus, if you’re not completely satisfied within the first 30 days, you can cancel without any hassle, guaranteeing you nothing but satisfaction.

With Quickline, you’re not just getting better internet, you’re getting better value, better service, and a better experience overall.”

Wireless Changes

Package name: airConnect

Download Speed: 100Mbps

Upload Speed: 20Mbps

Intro price: £14 a month for 12 months

After intro: £28 a month

Package Name: airUltra

Download Speed: 200Mbps

Upload Speed: 30Mbps

Intro price: £14.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £29 a month

FTTP Changes

Package Name: Connect

Download Speed: 200Mbps

Upload Speed: 200Mbps

Intro price: £14.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £29 a month

Package Name: Extra

Download Speed: 500Mbps

Upload Speed: 500Mbps

Intro price: £19.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £39 a month

Package Name: Complete

Download Speed: 1000Mbps

Upload Speed: 1000Mbps

Intro price: £24.50 a month for 12 months

After intro: £49 a month

Openreach (BT) have restored their broadband and phone services in the Swanscombe and surrounding areas of Kent (England), which follows a major network outage that struck thousands of local premises. This began after damage was caused to the operator’s core fibre optic cables at around midday on Saturday (31st Aug).

The incident caused disruption for customers of both retail broadband ISPs on Openreach’s network and some other network operators that harness the same physical infrastructure (e.g. Netomnia also reported disruption). Some data capacity (backhaul) links to local mobile masts were similarly said to have been impacted, which saw slower than normal 4G and 5G mobile performance from at least O2 and EE.

The exact cause of the damage itself remains unclear, although Kent Online indicated that it was “accidental” and related to ongoing network restoring work that was taking place in the same area following last year’s landslide. The damage is understood to have been quite complex and meant that several fibres needed to be re-spliced.

Sadly, major cable breaks can often take a few short days and, in more extreme cases, a few weeks to fully resolve. But the latest update from Openreach indicates progress.

A Spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview (today):

“We have several engineering teams currently onsite who are working hard to get customers back online after a number of our fibre cables were damaged impacting homes and businesses in the village of Swanscombe and surrounding area.

This is a complex repair job with work already ongoing in the area to restore extensive damage to our network following a cliff collapse under a key road in the village last year, so its going to take us a few days to get it sorted out.

We understand how frustrating this must be for anyone is affected and we thank anyone involved for their patience while we get things fixed. Anyone experiencing any disruption with their phone or broadband service should do their best to report it to their service provider who will then inform us.”

Openreach’s cabling team managed to pull the majority of the cable through on Saturday night. Since then, they’ve had a team of jointers on site working to connect all the cables back up, which is time-consuming due to the size of the cables and amount of work needed. But progress is being made and the team were working throughout Sunday to try and complete the works.

Some customer feedback we’ve seen suggested that the first services finally came back online at around 3-4pm yesterday afternoon, and further restorations have followed.

UPDATE:

A second update came in just as we published this story. A spokesperson for Openreach said: “All works were completed late last night – at around 21:3 0– and all customers should now be back in service.”

Oxfordshire-based alternative full fibre operator Zzoomm, which has deployed their 2Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 202,000 premises (RFS) in England, has reportedly accelerated their plans for an M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) drive with the appointment of Acuity Advisors to help identify prospective deals.

Just to recap. Zzoomm’s network, which is home to 30,000 customers (c.15% take-up), is currently present across around 29 market towns and small urban communities in parts of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Cheshire. But the provider originally aspired to cover 1 million premises across 85 UK towns by the end of 2025, before the difficulties of raising fresh capital forced their build to stop (here and here).

However, despite the challenges, the provider’s CEO, Matthew Hare, recently expressed a strong desire to achieve their 1 million premises target via a different approach. “If we can’t build it ourselves then … you have to buy it,” said Matthew in July 2024 (here) before confirming that they “absolutely are” on the acquisition trail as a means of achieving their original coverage aspiration.

Matthew Hare, Zzoomm’s CEO, said:

“Stopping the build is all about availability of capital, it’s not about availability of opportunity or aspiration … 1 million premises is still a good target to get to as a footprint, and probably even a bigger number, but if we can’t build it ourselves then we’ll have to find another way of getting there. The aspiration is absolutely still there”.

The first details of this drive now appear to have surfaced after Sky News reported that Zzoomm had hired Acuity Advisors, a specialist technology firm, to identify prospective acquisitions. The altnet is already said to have engaged in discussions with a number of similar network operators in the same space, although realistically it could be months before we learn whether this effort is going to bear fruit.

Separately, the same article also alleges that CommunityFibre recently made an offer worth around £300m to acquire rival altnet G.Network in London, but were rebuffed. This follows news in July 2024, which suggested that G.Network was once again hunting for a buyer (here). CityFibre is also understood to have been sniffing around both operators and has expressed its own strong desire for M&A activity (here).

Several members of ISPreview’s forum community have spotted that broadband ISP and mobile network operator EE (BT) appears to have quietly introduced new / revamped UK plans, which include the first support for their latest 5G Standalone (5G SA) mobile broadband technology. Faster speeds, network prioritisation and other benefits are expected.

The majority of UK 5G mobile networks today are Non-Standalone (NSA), which means they are still partly reliant on older and slower 4G infrastructure. But SA networks are pure end-to-end 5G that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better upload speeds, network slicing, improved support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, support for Voice over New Radio (VoNR or Vo5G) and increased reliability and security etc.

So far we’ve already seen both Vodafone (here) and O2 / Virgin Media (here) launching 5G SA services in the UK, initially across the busiest parts of several major cities. Meanwhile, the BT Group has previously said that they intended, via EE, to follow suit during the second half of 2024 (here).

However, an interesting thing happened on 29th August 2024 after EE quietly updated their T&Cs (here) and website to include 5G SA on several of their premium plans. This came alongside the option of a ‘Network Boost‘ that may also make it possible to add to other plans, but at present this is restricted to two plans.

Extract from the New Terms & Conditions

5G Standalone
Available to customers on an All Rounder or Full Works plan. Connect in selected 5G Standalone ready locations across the UK using a compatible device. For coverage, see ee.co.uk/why-ee/5g-on-ee

Network Boost
Available to customers on an All Rounder or Full Works plan. Prioritises data coverage to your phone in busy or crowded areas. No prioritisation of calls or texts. Available to customers in selected locations across the UK.

The new plans have some other changes too and also appear to be a bit more expensive, although our main focus today is on the addition of 5G SA. At present, little is known about the initial launch coverage of the new feature or precisely what sort of performance gain can be expected, but that will have to wait for the official announcement. The usual caveats of variable device support may also apply.

Personally speaking, yours truly prefers a more simplistic approach, where enhancements like 5G SA are just included by default and the base plans are kept very simple. I have never been a particularly big fan of making mobile plans too complicated via a myriad of add-ons or extras (upsell), which just makes it harder to compare the value of what you are getting. But each to their own.

We have asked EE to comment.