Shares in TalkTalk ( AOL UK, Opal, Tiscali ) have been climbing over the past couple of days after a Liberum Capital analyst, Mark James, pegged the broadband ISP with a share price buy recommendation of 180p and pointed to Vodafone as a possible buyer. Shares in TalkTalk have risen on the news, growing from just over 131p at the start of this week to 138p (approximately +9%) on Thursday morning.



Rival analysts have also been quick to point out that Vodafone are currently busy selling some of their assets and might not currently be in an ideal position to splash out on a big bunny like TalkTalk UK. Still, regular readers will recall that Vodafone got quite close to TalkTalk after it pulled out of plans to acquire Tiscali UK last year. At one point Vodafone even hinted at some sort of partnership with TalkTalk in the future, if it brought Tiscali.

Since then there has been little movement, although Vodafone clearly has an interest in establishing a more solid position in the wider UK telecoms market. It tried and failed to grab Tiscali, which suggests that they could try something similar again soon. TalkTalk is a good bet since all of the other prospects have wider interests to protect, although the ISP is also in quite a strong position right now and might be a hard target to hit.

It's easy to forget that Vodafone does offer its own HOME fixed line 8Mbps ISP package from just £14 per month, which can also be bundled with line rental and voice calls for an extra £11. However this is based off a restrictive BT Managed Broadband solution and Vodafone has so far failed to update the package to keep it relevant.