Carphone Warehouse buys Tiscali to become UK no.1 ISP?

Posted on May 9 2009 - 3:27pm by Richard Sharp

carphone_tiscaliCarphone warehouse has continued in their plans to dominate the UK broadband market, by purchasing the troubled UK division of Tiscali for a bargain price of £236 million. The original asking price was thought to be in the region of £500 million and with this latest acquisition by Carphone Warehouse it has reputedly placed them at the number one position of UK broadband service provider. Carphone Warehouse has already added the TalkTalk service and AOL to its portfolio of products which has resulted in leaping to the forefront of internet service providers.

BT has until now always held the top spot as the UK’s biggest residential broadband supplier and they argue that they still do, however the industry has other ideas and reports suggest that BT have indeed been knocked off their first position. Tiscali will come under the control of Carphone Warehouse in June but until then will remain separate.

Taking on ‘challenge Tiscali’ isn’t likely to be an easy one, TalkTalk themselves have enough customer service issues, but adding to that Tiscali’s renowned failure in supplying what their customers want is likely to put a strain on the call centre staff. For the new largest internet service provider it is likely to cause a headache trying to resolve the issues and to begin to deliver the kind of service that BT has struggled to deliver for so long. Existing Tiscali customers which is estimated to be in the region of 1.4 million, won’t see any interruption to their broadband or email service and will be able to access the internet services that the internet service provider already delivers as before.

A further pressure that the Carphone Warehouse acquisition is likely to face is the prospect that they must now ensure that the whole of the UK has a minimum of 2mbps of broadband in line with the Universal Service Obligation.

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