TalkTalk’s Wrongful FTTP Network Closure Warning Causes Confusion UPDATE

Low-cost UK broadband ISP TalkTalk has apologised after customers in two rural villages outside Warrington, which are being served by their older UltraFibreOptic (UFO) based gigabit FTTP network on CityFibre’s platform, were mistakenly told that their service was due to be disconnected.

Firstly, a history lesson. Back in September 2020 we reported (here) that FibreNation, which had at the time only recently been acquired by CityFibre from TalkTalk, was piloting their first rural deployment of a gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network into the villages of Hollins Green and Rixton (Warrington). Locals were then connected via TalkTalk’s related UltraFibreOptic brand.

However, we revealed late last year that customers on the UFO product were notified that the “trial” service is now “coming to an end” because its “equipment is obsolete” (here), although a solid closure date was never set. At the time, this primarily only seemed to impact those in the city of York, although we note that customers in the aforementioned villages also received the same notification.

Residents of the two villages, who have been awaiting an update from TalkTalk since last year, were recently given an unwelcome surprise when they logged into the provider’s website to find a warning about the impending loss of their broadband and phone service (pictured – top). But upon contacting the stated phone number, none of the provider’s support agents seemed to know anything about it.

On top of that, locals who tried putting their address though TalkTalk and CityFibre’s availability checkers (i.e. to see if they could choose an alternative package or provider) found that neither system reported them as having any access to full fibre at all. At this point, ISPreview got involved and there’s some good news for worried and confused locals.

A TalkTalk spokesperson said:

“Customers in Hollins Green and Rixton with Ultra Fibre Optic (UFO) broadband may have seen a banner on our website, warning that their service is due to be disconnected. This banner was displayed by mistake and has now been removed – we apologise for any inconvenience. Customers in this exchange will continue to receive their usual service until further notice.”

The reality is that TalkTalk will, at some point, need to migrate customers on the local network to the new platform, but the closure process has not yet begun for the two villages and nobody is going to be disconnected unexpectedly. We suspect that the banner may have been more intended for those in the city of York, where the infrastructure has already been upgraded.

The ISP has now removed the banner and are known to be exploring options to reinstate it in a more targeted manner. We also think they’d do well to update their availability checker in order to be less misleading for those still covered by the FibreNation side of CityFibre’s network.

UPDATE 25th May 2023

The situation around the two villages appears to have taken another turn after CityFibre’s support team informed a local resident that they didn’t take on the part of the network which would serve Warrington, after they acquired FibreNation. This is despite the fact that CityFibre themselves revealed the build many months after they acquired FN (see our links above).

The same customer was also informed that talks are ongoing with Freedom Fibre to take on that part of the network, which would be a complete takeover and occur around the end of June 2023. Such a move would be interesting because Freedom Fibre are a rival AltNet and one that TalkTalk strongly supports.

Naturally, we asked the operator about all this. CityFibre declined to comment on the Freedom Fibre talks, but they did confirm that they owned the related network, although FibreNation rolled out to Hollins Green and Brixton prior to its acquisition by CityFibre, even though it wasn’t announced until many months later.

As above, it was a pilot project exploring overhead PIA (using Openreach’s existing poles) in rural areas and the gigabit voucher scheme.