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62,000 broadband customers desert Tiscali

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 8 Oct 2009 at 11:01

Carphone Warehouse's ISP TalkTalk gained 77,000 new broadband subscribers in the second quarter, according to the company's second quarter figures.

However, this figure was offset by churn at its recently acquired Tiscali unit, which lost 62,000 customers "ahead of the acquisition", leaving Carphone with 15,000 net customer additions.

The company has claimed the departures were anticipated, and says its new customer retention scheme has improved confidence in the service and slowed departures, ahead of the deal's finalisation.

The final price of Tiscali is dependent on the number of customers who come with the ISP, though an initial sale price of £236 million was being bandied about for the broadband provider back in May.

TalkTalk is aiming to hold between 4.1 million and 4.2 million subscribers by the close of the year.

Carphone Warehouse also confirmed that it was pressing on with plans to spin off TalkTalk, with the company's chief executive Charles Dunstone confident the deal will be done by the end of March 2010.

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User comments

I was one.

I was a Pipex user since 2004, but service had declined sharply in the last two years and abysmally since Tiscali took over. The prospect of the Carphone Warehouse as my ISP prompted me to jump ship.

No regrets either - I now get 10Mb for £5 less than I was paying for my 8Mb connection that gave 2Mb or less.

Plus I can ring a freephone number and get a reply! Something Pipex had failed to do for years on their premium rate number.

By cheysuli on 8 Oct 2009

I have been with Freedom to Surf for approximatly 4 years. Overall my service has been fantastic, even during my house move at the moment thay have kepy all my services running while I have no ADSL becasue BT are messing me around.

cheysuli, who's your new ISP?

By DaChimp on 8 Oct 2009

Had Pipex broadband for the last six years. The first four were great, the last two have been more a running battle with support people who repeatedly say switch the router off, plug it in again ad nauseum to avoid a BT engineer sorting out the fault at the exchange.

Moving to Zen. At least their techies know what they're talking about.

By bubbles16 on 8 Oct 2009

???

I've used TalkTalk for about 8 months now after leaving Tiscali and had no problems at all.

Much better service than before and it saved me about £100 a year.

By JStairmand on 8 Oct 2009

ok for me

Never had a problem with tiscali. £20 all in for anytime phone, 8megathings and line rental included. Never had to deal with customer service though! still, its a commodity and theres is cheap cheap cheap leaving more money for my wife to spend

By darkhairedlord on 8 Oct 2009

Thats the thing

"Never had to deal with customer service though"

Thats the problem with all ISP's. You never know how good they are until it goes wrong.

I left Tiscli and they owe me £15. I phoned them to let them know and the next thing is I get a debt collector calling ME for the money!!! I'm usually a calm bloke but it's quite surprising how many swear words you can work into a sentence when your cross.

By JStairmand on 8 Oct 2009

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