TalkTalk broadband growth WANES as it reports surge in pay-TV customers

TalkTalk watched its broadband growth slip in the budget telco's final quarter, with 136,000 Brits signing up to the service compared with 193,000 new customers in the same three-month period in 2013.

The company said in its Q4 results, ended 31 March, that its total broadband base now stood just shy of 4.2 million punters.

TalkTalk boss Dido Harding, was keen to point out that her firm had finally witnessed full-year sales growth for the first time since it was spun out of Carphone Warehouse (which is having a busy day with Dixons) in 2010.

Total revenue for the year climbed 3.4 per cent to £1.7bn. But pre-tax profit plummeted nearly 54 per cent to £61m from £132m a year earlier, TalkTalk said.

In the ISP's fourth quarter, it added 185,000 TV customers, outshining the competition - including BT and BSkyB - for square eyeballs.

TalkTalk said it had picked up an impressive one million pay-TV customers in the past 18 months.

The company reminded the City this morning that it had recently inked a deal with BSkyB and CityFibre to bring faster broadband speeds to folk living in the City of York. TalkTalk said:

This will be the first time that a UK city has been connected with such high speeds on a city - wide basis and will give us the opportunity to fully test a new cost effective approach to building a viable pure fibre network, independent from BT Openreach’s infrastructure.

We intend to bring ultrafast broadband to two further cities in due course and are excited by the long term potential for a national roll-out.

The telco, which relies heavily on BT's copper network, has a modest subscriber base of 207,000 customers with fibre products. ®