Posted: 13th May, 2008 By: MarkJ
In a surprise twist the
Financial Times reports that
Tiscali's board has rejected a bid of £550m by The Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk, AOL) for its UK Internet business, leading to Carphone being excluded from its shortlist and second round of bidding!
Tiscali had hoped to get £800m and it's understood that six other companies have lodged their interest with the UK and Italian Internet giant, including both Vodafone and BSkyB. Mario Rosso,
Tiscali's chief executive, is now charged with negotiating a final shortlist.
The report indicates that
Tiscali may have already had interest exceeding Carphone's £550m figure, although that in itself does not fully explain the boards decision; though the public nature of its approach might not have been appropriate. Meanwhile BT, Fast-web and
Virgin Media are also thought to have interest, though that has yet to be officially confirmed.
Meanwhile Tiscali has just released its latest results to Q1-2008, which revealed that it had 1,875,000 UK broadband subscribers (see our '
Top 10' page for a comparison):
The ADSL users acquired at 31 March 2008 are about 390,000 compared to 31 March 2007
(+46,000 during the quarter) reaching 1,875,000 users, of which 780,000 direct customers, and about 830,000 customers subscribed to dual play services. Broadband market share at 31 March 2008 has remained constant at roughly 12%.
The network coverage in unbundling in the United Kingdom at 31 March 2008 is equal to 850 sites (55% of lines). The average ARPU for broadband services in UK is equal to EUR 29 per month in line with the objectives of the plan.