Another 13,500 TalkTalk customers are moving to Fleur Telecom
If you are one of the 13,500 TalkTalk customers who have just been told their broadband and phone line are moving to a company called Fleur Telecom, the short version is that your price does not move with it. The date is 1 September. The transfer was reported by ISPreview, and TalkTalk has told the people affected directly.
Fleur Telecom is not a household name. It is one of the brands run by the Horsham-based Telecom Acquisitions Group, which also sits behind Home Telecom and Eclipse Broadband, and ISPreview says TalkTalk itself holds a controlling stake in that group. So this is less a sale to a stranger than a move to a quieter room in the same house. The group puts its own customer base at more than 80,000.
The reason given is the copper switch-off. Telecom Acquisitions told ISPreview that these are the customers still on the old copper phone line and the broadband that rides on it, all of which has to be moved before that network retires in January 2027, and that it can work through them faster than TalkTalk would have managed directly. Its chief executive, Nigel Barnett, says the group has already moved more than 8,000 customers off those older products, that many of these accounts have been on the TalkTalk network for over twenty years, and that he expects to be finished by the end of the year.
On the bill, the answer is the dull one, which is the one you want. ISPreview reports that the pricing, terms and conditions all carry over unchanged from 1 September, and that support moves to the group’s UK-based service centre, the same team that answers for Home Telecom. There is nothing for you to do. The one thing not to do is cancel your direct debit off your own bat, because the account is transferring rather than ending.
The question people actually have is whether this lets them leave. Probably not, is the honest answer. If you were already out of contract you could walk away without a fee last week, and you still can. Inside your minimum term the exit fees stand, because on the published terms nothing about your deal has got worse. What nobody has put a number on is renewal. When your term ends you will be renewing on Fleur’s prices rather than TalkTalk’s, and neither company has said what those look like for this group.
This is the second batch of TalkTalk customers to change hands in a fortnight, after the larger sale to Rise Fibre we covered last week, and with the consumer business itself reported to be drawing interest from buyers, it is unlikely to be the last. If you would rather choose your next provider than be handed one, start with the availability checker. And if it is the phone line under all this you are wondering about, our guide to broadband without a landline covers what the switch-off actually changes.