TalkTalk has warned there are doubts over its future survival as the struggling broadband provider squeezes suppliers in the shadow of a looming cash crunch.
Bosses have warned there is “material uncertainty” ahead of a crucial debt refinancing that “may cast significant doubt” over its ability to continue.
TalkTalk is in the process of breaking up and selling off parts of its business as it grapples with a £1.1bn debt pile.
Yes, material uncertainty is a real thing. But it’s not quite the same thing as “We’re about to go bust! Help!”.
It’s, “well, we’ve got some debt maturing. Which we’re going to need to reissue. And we don’t know what the terms will be, but they’ll be worse. We’re fairly sure we can get a debt offering away at some price, obviously, but what? So, the beancounters tell us we’ve got to warn that if we don;t get the new debt issue away then there will be a problem”.
#But journos have now realised that they can read the stock market announcements (takes 15 minutes to read through that page each morning, cheap time investment for an article) and every time there’s such a warning they can churn out another article.
“Going concern” warning is not the same as “We’re going bust”. The same page will also tell you of people who are about to go bust but the language becomes stronger.
That news is similar to when you hear that some celebrity from the past has just died.
I thought Talk Talk had gone bust, probably because I never see adverts.
TT deserve to go bust, they had crap customer service and gave us nothing but grief. Tiscali with whom we had the original connection were fine.
Murp will be getting worried. Reading excerpts of company reports and not knowing what they mean is his grift, but it’ll all come crashing down if people who can string three coherent sentences together start doing it.
I wonder if Elon Musk will put every telco on the planet out of business.
Don’t need anywhere near as much expensive fibre optic in the ground if you can cheaply access high bandwidth, low latency LEO from anywhere.
What’s stopping Starlink from devouring the legacy telcos?
I’m with TalkTalk Business*, who have given me excellent service for many years. I don’t know to what extent they’re at arm’s length from the rest of TT.
* even though I no longer have a business 🙂
Steve: Physics. Starlink is good at re-using spectrum but once you start looking at the bandwidth demand in the denser parts of developed countries it doesn’t work. It could stunt or prevent fibre deployment in the third world though. No doubt the grifters there will be asking us for yet another sub, especially if they can include a climate angle.
The retail broadband market these days is much the same as other utilities; i.e. you are selling the same stuff down the same pipes to people’s homes as everyone else. It’s also over regulated, which means the only way you can make any margin in a fiercely competitive market is on the customer facing & billing side.
This is mostly wonderful for consumers, though if the government butted out a bit we would see better differentiation of offerings. Essentially broadband (in the UK at least) has become a commodity, on which Tim has opined recently as to who sets the prices in those markets.
I’m interested to see what broader 5G rollout will do to the cabled infrastructure setup though; could be very disruptive in more rural areas.
It could stunt or prevent fibre deployment in the third world though. No doubt the grifters there will be asking us for yet another sub, especially if they can include a climate angle.
You can get quite cosy just standing in front of the existing fibre cabinets along our streets. Extending this to every home won’t be trivial in total energy requirements.
@ BiK
Rural dweller here using 4G alongside a (work provided) VDSL line. The 4G is generally around 20 Mbps symmetric whereas the VDSL is 10 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream.
BT provided a comical quote of £30k (plus VAT) to provide an actual fibre service.
Mobile is definitely the way forward here.
TalkTalkBiz came from a different stable than the consumer business. I have no idea how different their customer service operation is nowadays.
The problem with 5G is that it will activate the dormaant vaccine nanobots and turn everyon into Cyberdrones.
Joe,
5G needs fibre so if you haven’t got decent fibre to the cabinet you won’t be getting 5G anytime soon. Also, last time I checked with a mate who’s quite senior at 3 it will be sometime before they get round to rural areas.
TG – ah, I hadn’t thought about that, thanks.
Joe – £30K? What amount of digging does that buy these days?
I’m fascinated by lo-fi geeky stuff such as LoRaWAN. But that’s just me – communicating in 8 kilobytes or less feels cosy.
Yeah Steve, but geeky stuff isn’t suited for the masses.. Like raw LINUX…
And as far as Musk’s SkyNet is concerned.. It does have the same problems as ordinary satellite internet: high and varying latency and Definitely Not Cheap.
And the earlier mentioned Traffic Trouble…
Then again.. Starlink was never meant to provide internet/connectivity to/for dense population hubs.
What’s flying around now is a live test for his Mars and Moon plans. Because that “communication” thing is a problem that needs to be reliably solved before he can even start to make a serious attempt.
As a former TT customer I can say I endured poor connectivity, poor outsourced customer service and laughably jnept technical support
Their ineptitude has meant that on several occasions since they have been an option dismissed out of hand. I really don’t care if they are any better, no company that treats me so poorly will ever enjoy.my custom again
Direct Line is another, fifteen years now and counting
BiND – you probably already know, but there are a set of semi-regional independent FTTP providers, rolling out over the last few years – the likes of Trooli or Lightning Fibre – mainly concentrating on the semi-rural areas. OK, those two are in the SE, it’s not clear to me how dependent they are on OpenReach having installed FTTC or whatever.
Interesting in that there do seem to be a fair few of them, and it seems there’s been a bit of consolidation going on.