Posted: 07th Jan, 2010 By: MarkJ

It is official. From today the ISP formerly known as Tiscali UK is no more and has been fully rebranded to TalkTalk . The inevitable move follows May 2009’s £236m Tiscali acquisition by The Carphone Warehouse , which already owns TalkTalk , AOL and Opal. The combined ISP group is currently home to approximately 4.12m broadband subscribers.
Charles Dunstone, CEO of The Carphone Warehouse, said:
"We want to make it very clear that being part of TalkTalk is much more than just having a different logo on the top of your bill. For that reason we’ve reviewed all of the pricing tariffs and can say from today that if you’re with TalkTalk you’re getting the same value as your fellow customers.
For many of our customers this will mean a reduction in their monthly bills, others will see no change with the remainder getting a small increase. Any customer visiting our website can clearly see our tariffs.
We’ve gained a lot from the Tiscali acquisition, most notably TV and Portal expertise and some great people, but from today the brand name will disappear and our focus is on TalkTalk."
Dunstone also claims that TalkTalk currently has "
the best network," which is something that O2 , Be Broadband , Zen Internet and quite a few other rival Internet Service Providers might choose to disagree with.
Likewise that "
small increase" is perhaps somewhat more significant. Just prior to Christmas Tiscali's existing customers were warned that those on its £14.99 per month standalone broadband-only package who did not "
upgrade" to TalkTalk's phone line rental service would be charged an extra +£5 per month (
here).
TalkTalk would of course maintain that its phone line service is superior and offers better value for money. However it forgets that there may be many reasons why some users have chosen not to adopt TalkTalk or Tiscali's unbundled ( LLU ) telephone line services.