The Carphone Warehouse ( TalkTalk , AOL , Opal etc. ) has today officially confirmed that its broadband ISP division , TalkTalk , will acquire Tiscali UK in a £236 million cash deal that will create Britain's second largest broadband provider (biggest for consumer services) covering over 25% of all UK households. Existing customers should not suffer any interruptions or changes to their current email and services.

However, TalkTalk informs us that Tiscali's subscribers should ultimately benefit from the higher bandwidth, greater capacity, lower-cost telephone calls and “advanced” services of Carphone's infrastructure.


So after one year of trying to sell the business they've finally done it, albeit for less than half of the rumoured £550m to £600m value placed on the UK group at around the same time in 2008. Admittedly Tiscali's value has become a victim of the recession, though poor management and an overly inflated opinion of its value have also played their part.

Customers will now be hoping that TalkTalk is able to lift the ISPs standards above its previous level and perhaps even offer some much needed new network investment. The Tiscali deal is planned to complete by the end of next month and customers can find out more here:

http://www.talktalk.co.uk/tiscali

We expect that the move will also shake up our Top 10 UK Broadband ISPs by Subscriber Size league table too, allowing UK ISP Zen Internet to enter the chart at 10th position. However this will not occur until we see the first merged financial results.