Posted: 20th Jan, 2010 By: MarkJ

The Carphone Warehouse ( TalkTalk, AOL UK , Opal ) has warned that it does not plan any new investment into broadband IPTV services, which were inherited alongside its £236m acquisition of Tiscali UK last year. Existing customers of Tiscali TV (HomeChoice) will no doubt be concerned about the future, although the service is known to have been in decline for awhile.
Carphone's CEO, Charles Dunstone, said:
"It would be foolhardy to deliver our own TV proposition against Freeview, Sky and [ Virgin Media ]. We have to accept our heritage is not in TV. We have a much better chance of succeeding alongside the PSBs with [Project Canvas] when it is ready."
Project Canvas hopes to create a standards based open environment for broadband connected digital television (DTV) receivers. The project was started by the BBC, ITV, BT and will also allow IPTV services, such as the BBC's iPlayer, to be viewed via TV sets.
Mobile and broadband operator Orange UK also chose to abandon plans for its own IPTV service early last year. Orange, much like TalkTalk, believed that existing competition was simply too great and instead opted to shelve its ambitions.
So what now for Tiscali TV's existing customer base (technically speaking we can't call it TalkTalk TV yet)? It will depend upon what kind of service results from Project Canvas, though Dunstone suggests that users could probably expect to be moved over once Canvas is completed.