The Horsham-based Telecom Acquisitions Group (TAL), which is a holding company for several familiar UK residential broadband brands (Home Telecom, Eclipse Broadband etc.), has today announced that they’ve signed a wholesale agreement to access and sell services over KCOM’s full fibre (FTTP) network.
The deal means TAL’s brand, Eclipse Broadband, will market and support solutions on the expanded KCOM network in parts of East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire (England) that have recently been cabled with fibre. The agreement is due to become effective from the 19th November 2024.
The move is also interesting because Eclipse Broadband was formerly a KCOM brand, which was purchased in 2021 by TAL with circa 10,000 off-net customers. TAL, which trades under several brands including Eclipse, Home Telecom and Fleur Telecom, now has residential partnership deals with CityFibre, FullFibre, MS3, Freedom Fibre and F&W Networks, which run alongside traditional services provided by TalkTalk, BT, Vodafone, Virgin Media and Sky Broadband.
As a side note, TAL confirmed to ISPreview last month that they had a wholesale agreement of some sort with Virgin Media to harness the nexfibre network, which made them one of the first to do so (other than anchor tenant Virgin Media, of course). But the details around this remain a little unclear.
Nigel Barnett, TAL’s CEO said:
“This project has been some time in the making, but we’ve always had a great working relationship with the KCOM team which has made this exciting opportunity possible. This offering will state ‘powered by KCOM’ and is supported by the TAL brands combined Trustpilot Rating 4.4 “Excellent” with the support of over 15,000 reviews.
The agreement reinforces his group’s presence in the Hull, East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire area following the acquisition of bases developed by ISP’s Open Fibre, Link Broadband, Infinics Broadband and Zybre.
In just the last twelve months all our brands’ customer bases have trebled in size.”
Jan Collins, MD of KCOM Enterprise, said:
“KCOM’s full fibre network powers thousands of homes and businesses across Hull, East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. This new deal with TAL means that more customers in our expansion areas can access the benefits of our fast, secure and reliable network via the Eclipse broadband brand.”
The TAL Group is now home to over 100,000 broadband customers and has returned a turnover of £40m. Pictured at the top are Nigel (L) and Jan (R).