Tiscali tickles sub-£20 broadband

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 4 Oct 2002 at 14:52

Cut-rate, cut bandwidth connection

Tiscali has announced a permanent £19.99 deal for a broadband package, although the bandwidth is choked to 256Kbits/sec downstream - half that of the standard 512Kbits/sec offered by the likes of itself, Freeserve and BT. On top of this is a £50 set up fee and the cost of the hardware - another £65. However, you don't have to buy a PC with it, as you do with Freeserve's £20 deal.

Steve Horley, ISP Director for Tiscali told us that far from entering a financially negative price war, Tiscali's new broadband deal would 'make a positive margin' for the ISP. The reason for this, he says, is because of an Oftel ruling this summer that effectively means the company can take control of its Internet traffic much further up the chain, rather than having to pay BT to manage it right up until the last mile.

He stressed that Tiscali was in a good position to move quickly on the summer 'ATM interconnection' ruling as it has a very long lease on the fibre network it uses to carry its traffic, which meant it could negotiate directly with BT, rather than by proxy through the network owners.

As to what difference customers would see on a 256Kbits/sec connection as opposed to a 512Kbits/sec one, he reckons for general surfing you would have more than adequate bandwidth, and cites the success of NTL's 128Kbits/sec service as evidence of the appetite for 'middle-ground' broadband services. Even so, media-hungry types might prefer the full 512 option for streaming large files.

Whether Tiscali would make downward moves on its 512Kbits/sec service, Horley declined to comment, saying the company has no new plans for this at the moment. Tiscali's 512Kbits/sec service costs £27.99 (although no activation fee applies).