Pipex offer six months of free Broadband, Tiscali nip into 3rd place

Pipex seem to have done a massive about-face and sorted themselves out. Despite laying off staff, and offering themselves on a plate to the highest bidder, they are currently pitching themselves at customers via the offer of huge savings on their bundled Broadband and phone service.

Six months of free broadband is up for grabs for customers who sign up for the Broadband + Anytime calls package – seeing as you don’t pay for the Broadband part of the deal, this package, usually costing £19.00 a month, is available for the reduced monthly price of £12.50. This means all-inclusive calls at any time of the day, plus up to 8MB Broadband speeds – even when you include the BT line rental, it’s a good deal by anyone’s standards.

Whether this signifies that everything is now relatively peachy at Pipex HQ, or if it’s a last-ditch drive to increase revenue to make them a more attractive prospect to buyers is anyone’s guess. The official line on the recent promotion is:

“We’re delighted to be offering such a good deal on our main broadband and call package,” says Dominic Crolla, of Pipex’s residential division. “With over 15 years’ experience and a reputation for offering reliable, high performance broadband, it’s perfect for both new broadband users and those that are just looking to get better value from their phone and internet packages.”

Despite this, speculation on the possibility of a takeover has increased, with Tiscali confirming recent rumours that they were eyeing up Pipex. As reported in our news feed, Massimo Cristofori, chief financial officer at Tiscali, said in a statement that “Pipex has started the procedure of an eventual sale and it has sent us their dossier.”

Although this does not confirm that Tiscali are going to buy up, it also doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. Tiscali are now the 3rd largest providers or Broadband services in the UK, a position previously occupied by TalkTalk, who were also, until recently, interested in buying up Pipex.

A report in the Independent suggested that Pipex’s WiMax network, may be a deciding factor in other ISPs reluctance to buy up; the WiMax technology, ostensibly to be used to wirelessly route connections to households over the so called ‘last mile’ is largely untested and therefore hard to value – companies don’t want to gamble an investment on an unproven technology.

The report in the Independent comes with a quote from Andrew Darley, analyst with KBC Peel Hunt said that Pipex’s WiMax licence was “the ace in [Pipex Chairman] Peter Dubens’ pack.”

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