In February 2026, customers of a Manchester ISP called Vispa received an email with the subject line “Urgent: Vispa has now ceased trading. Please cancel your Direct Debit!” The company had been selling broadband since 1999. The email gave no disconnection date, named no replacement provider, and told people to find a new ISP “immediately”.
That is the bad version of this. There is also a good version, where you find out months later because a different logo appears on your bill and nothing else changes at all.
Both happen regularly, and the difference matters enormously to you. This page explains what is actually going on underneath, how to tell which version you are in, and what you are owed in each case.
This is more common than you would think
While building the provider list for this site we re-checked every ISP we had recorded. In one pass, nine brands turned out to be gone:
| What happened | Providers |
|---|---|
| Ceased trading outright | Air Broadband, Vispa |
| Bought, customers migrated | Shell Energy (to TalkTalk), Origin (to Utility Warehouse) |
| Merged into a parent network | Jurassic Fibre, Swish Fibre, Giganet (all into AllPoints Fibre) |
| Rebranded | Fibre Heroes (to FullFibre) |
| Closed to new customers, base sold | Brillband (to Olilo) |
Every one of those was a real company selling real broadband to real households. None of them made national news.
The reason you rarely hear about it is that most of these events are deliberately invisible. A well-managed transfer is designed so that you notice nothing. Only the disorderly ones — the liquidations — reach the customer as a shock.
The three ways your provider can disappear
1. Acquisition and migration — the orderly version
Someone buys the customer base. Your account, your line and usually your price move across to the new owner. You get a letter, your Direct Debit changes name, and your broadband keeps working.
Shell Energy Broadband is the textbook case. Shell sold its energy retail arm to Octopus in late 2023 and its broadband base — several hundred thousand customers — separately to TalkTalk in early 2024. TalkTalk was already the wholesale network underneath Shell’s service, so for most customers the migration was a billing change and nothing more.
Origin Broadband went the same way, with customers moving to Utility Warehouse by mid-2025.
What you are entitled to: if the new provider changes your terms to your material detriment — a higher price, a worse service, a longer commitment — you have the right to exit without penalty. That right comes from Ofcom’s general conditions on contract modifications, and the provider has to tell you about it. If the terms genuinely do not change, there is nothing to exit from and nothing to worry about.
What to actually do: read the letter, check the new price against what you were paying, and diarise the contract end date. Migrations are a common moment for a cheap legacy tariff to quietly become a standard one.
2. Merger into a parent network — usually invisible
Three separate brands — Jurassic Fibre in the south west, Swish Fibre in the Home Counties, Giganet in Hampshire — were folded into AllPoints Fibre Networks in a 2023 merger. Their individual websites no longer resolve.
This is a different thing from an acquisition. The network is the asset being consolidated; the retail brands were tidied up afterwards. AllPoints now operates as a wholesale network, with retail sold through partner ISPs rather than direct.
What it means for you: the fibre in the ground is the same fibre. The engineer who installed it works for the same company. What changes is who bills you and whose name is on the support line. Sometimes you end up buying the same physical connection from a different retailer.
The one thing to watch: when a brand becomes wholesale-only, existing retail customers get handed to a partner ISP. That partner sets its own prices at renewal.
3. Liquidation — the disorderly version
The company stops trading and does not arrange anywhere for you to go.
Vispa’s email is worth quoting because it is unusually explicit about the consequences. Customers were told the company had “ceased trading and decided to commence liquidation proceedings”, that they would need to “immediately” find a new ISP, and — importantly — to cancel any Direct Debit or standing order to stop further payments being taken.
That last instruction is the one people miss.
If your provider goes into liquidation: the order to do things
1. Cancel the Direct Debit — today. Not because the company will deliberately take money it should not, but because a Direct Debit is an instruction to your bank that survives the company’s collapse. Recovering money from a business in liquidation means joining a creditor queue, and consumers are near the back of it. Preventing the payment is trivial; clawing it back may be impossible.
2. Find out what network you are on before you order anything. This is the step that saves you weeks. If your service runs over Openreach, almost any provider can take over the line with minimal disruption and often no engineer visit. If it runs over a small independent network — a rural wireless operator, or an altnet that built its own fibre — your options may be limited to whoever else sells on that network, or you may need a completely new installation.
If you are not sure, your original contract or an old bill will usually say. Failing that, a postcode check with two or three providers will tell you quickly.
3. Order a new service before the old one dies. There is usually no clean handover in a liquidation, so overlap is your friend. A few days of paying twice is much better than three weeks with nothing.
4. Keep the email. It is your evidence that the service ended through no fault of yours, which matters if a debt collector surfaces later chasing a final bill.
5. Do not expect a refund for the unused month. You can submit a claim to the liquidator. Realistically, unsecured consumer creditors recover little or nothing.
What about money you have already paid?
Three different situations, three different answers.
Paid by Direct Debit in the last 13 months and the service was not delivered: the Direct Debit Guarantee entitles you to an immediate refund from your bank, not the failed company. This is a strong protection and banks honour it. Contact your bank, cite the Guarantee, explain the service ceased.
Paid by credit card, over £100: Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act makes your card issuer jointly liable with the trader. If you paid for something you did not receive, the card issuer owes you. This applies to router charges and upfront fees more often than to monthly billing.
Paid by debit card: ask your bank about chargeback. It is a scheme rule rather than a legal right, and it has time limits, but it works often enough to be worth the phone call.
The warning signs, in advance
You cannot predict a collapse, but the Vispa case had a visible trail. Reporting by ISPreview before the failure noted the company’s accounts were roughly a year overdue at Companies House, and that it faced a fourth “First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off” since 2022 — the most recent petitioned by HMRC.
None of that is hidden. Companies House is free, and any UK company’s filing history is public. If you are about to sign a two-year contract with a small ISP you have not heard of, it is ten minutes well spent:
- Overdue accounts. One late filing is an admin slip. A year overdue is a signal.
- Strike-off notices. Repeated ones, especially with HMRC as petitioner, mean unpaid tax.
- Very recent incorporation with an old brand name. Occasionally a struggling business incorporates a new vehicle and encourages customers to move to it. Vispa customers were reportedly pointed toward a company incorporated in 2024 by the same owner — a company that had itself been called “Vispa Group Limited” until August 2025.
That is not automatically improper. But it is something you would want to know before handing over a Direct Debit mandate.
Does this mean you should avoid small providers?
No — and the data does not support that conclusion.
Small independent ISPs are frequently cheaper, frequently faster, and in rural areas are often the only company that has bothered to build anything at all. Several of the best-value connections in the UK come from companies most people have never heard of. Meanwhile Shell Energy — backed by one of the largest companies on earth — exited broadband entirely, and its customers were fine, because the transfer was handled properly.
Size is not the variable that matters. What matters is:
- Which network you are on. An Openreach-based reseller failing is an inconvenience. An operator with its own network in a village with no alternative is a much bigger problem.
- Contract length versus company stability. A 24-month commitment to a company with overdue accounts is a worse bet than a rolling monthly deal at a slightly higher price.
- How you pay. Direct Debit gives you the Guarantee. That is genuine protection.
What we do about it on this site
Every provider we list that has closed, merged or been absorbed stays in our records as paused rather than being deleted. It never appears in results, so you cannot click through to a company that no longer sells anything — but the history stays visible, and the name cannot be quietly reused by something unrelated.
We also record why. If you arrive here searching for a brand that has gone, the honest answer is more useful than a blank page: who took the customers, whether the network is still there, and who sells on it now.
Sources
- ofcom.org.uk — Ofcom — General Conditions of Entitlement (contract modification and the right to exit
- directdebit.co.uk — Direct Debit Guarantee
- legislation.gov.uk — Consumer Credit Act 1974, Section 75
- find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk — Companies House company search
- ispreview.co.uk — ISPreview UK — reporting on Vispa ceasing trading, February 2026