While I was enjoying a long weekend in the s. of France just now, something bad happened to a UK ISP.

You might be surprised to see a geek like me caring about the fate of TalkTalk - aren’t I more of an Andrews and Arnold sort of bloke?

Well, up to a point. I’m sure A&A themselves would be the first to admit that the existence of TalkTalk as a meaningful alternative at the wholesale level allowed them to provide a better range of services and negotiate better pricing from BT Wholesale.

As for me, as domestic broadband became more reliable and A&A’s legendary customer service slid back towards bang average, I gave up paying the premium and went for cheep and cheerful, which for most of the past few years has been a white-labelled TalkTalk service, until I was sold off to Utility Warehouse.

Heck, when I was 17, I even had a job offer to do a year in industry with one of TT’s predecessor companies. I didn’t take it up in the end but somewhere in a parallel universe, I could be working for them today.

Virgin Media’s anger is understandable, but one suspects that at this stage of the game, there really was no other way to avoid the customers losing service - not really acceptable when everything from granny’s panic button to schools and hospitals might be among those affected.

If you consume domestic internet in the UK, take a moment to pour one out tonight and give thanks for the fact that the competition TT provided over the years likely means you have a better internet link than BT would have got round to building you without competition.

Let’s hope the politicians and the CMA come up with something to ensure meaningful competition rides again in this market, and let’s also hope that private equity can keep its tentacles off in the meantime.