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 board’s 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):