Virgin Media has sold its remaining 97,700 ADSL customers to TalkTalk, a deal that could see the London-based telco become the third-largest broadband provider in the country.
Announcing the news in its second quarter financial statement, TalkTalk hailed the move as a "good strategic acquisition" that would be used to boost take-up of its broadband, TV and fibre services.
The statement said: "These are DSL customers outside Virgin Media's cable footprint but are substantially on-net for our own unbundled network, and represent a good strategic acquisition that will accelerate the growth of our broadband, TV and fibre bases.The National base stood at 97,700 at the end of September 2014. We expect that a substantial proportion of these customers will be migrated onto our network through 2015."
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A report by ThinkBroadband.com notes that Virgin Media, currently the third-largest broadband provider in the UK, reported 4.4m customers in its second quarter financial statement, versus TalkTalk's 4.2m. While the new additions alone wouldn't be enough to see TalkTalk plug the gap, a strong marketing push and succesful fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) deployment in York in 2015 could see the company leapfrog Virgin, according to the report.
TalkTalk appointed Fujitsu infrastructure contractor for its FTTP joint venture in York, which will supply 1Gb services to consumers and businesses, a move that it said could potentially extend a pure fibre network to 10m households.
