TalkTalk hack cost the company 100,000 customers and £80m

(AFP/Getty Images)

TalkTalk lost more than 100,000 customers following the hacking attack in October, in which four million customers were warned that their personal data was put at risk.

In the end, the data of just 157,000 people were compromised, but the bad press in the weeks surrounding the incident were feared to cause an exodus.

The 101,000 customers that left represented less than 3 per cent of the subscriber base.

Rival network Sky added 144,000 customers in the last three months of 2015, while BT added 130,000, partly because of losses at TalkTalk.

“We saw a big dip inevitably in early November and then the business started returning to normal through December and very much back to normal now,” Harding said on Tuesday.

Five young men aged between 15-20 were arrested after the attack and freed pending an investigation.

Additional reporting by Reuters