Tiscali bid to turn Carphone into UK's biggest ISP

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 22 Sep 2008 at 07:56

Carphone Warehouse is set to become the UK's biggest ISP if a new bid for the UK arm of Tiscali proves successful.

The company is reported to have bid just shy of £450m for Tiscali, which has been up for sale since the beginning of the year.

If successful, the Tiscali takeover would make Carphone Warehouse the country's leading ISP, leapfrogging BT. In addition to its own Talk Talk brand, Carphone Warehouse also owns the UK arm of AOL, giving it a broad consumer base.

There is, however, another undisclosed company in the running to buy Tiscali, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

BT, Vodafone and BSkyB have all been rumoured to be interested in acquiring Tiscali in the past, although BT may have soured its chances of a deal after it carpet-bombed Tiscali's customers with a mailshot casting doubt over Tiscali's future. Tiscali threatened to take legal action against BT for the stunt.

Carphone Warehouse is the frontrunner to buy Tiscali, as the company has more than £1bn burning a hole in its pocket after it sold half its retail division to US firm Best Buy earlier this year.

However, any marriage between Carphone and Tiscali is unlikely to be welcomed by PC Pro readers, who gave TalkTalk only three stars out of six in this year's Service & Reliability Awards, while AOL and Tiscali scored a mere two.

Click here to find out who you voted as the UK's top ISP.