Tiscali to do a Pipex? RSS

A piece in the Financial Times quoted Tiscali overlord and chief executive Tommaso Pompei saying that Tiscali may well sell off the UK broadband arm of the business within the next two years.

Noting the consolidating climate of the UK broadband market, Pompei states that whilst Tiscali’s UK services are not up for grabs per se, he isnt ruling out a sale either. Predicting a second wave of consolidation within the marketplace, Pompei does not expect that Tiscali will be able to compete as aggressively in the market as they have been. “We do expect to be part of this process,” he told the FT. “This year for sure we’ll be 100% focused on our results, but we are prepared to react should the consolidation take place.”

BT, Orange and O2, all of whom already have or are planning to roll out IPTV would be interested in buying up, as would Carphone Warehouse for the same reason – CW is the only Top 6 ISP that does not have IPTV or has not made mention of setting up a service.

The FT interview also reveals that Tiscali has turned in its first net profit (approximately £15million) since it was founded in 1998 by entrepreneur Renato Soru. Tiscali began life as a fixed-line telephone service provider, becoming an ISP a year later, before going on a trans-continental shopping spree that saw Tiscali having significant brand presence in 15 European countries and South Africa.

If a sale goes ahead, Tiscali would be following in the footsteps of acquiree Pipex, who also opened their wallets for Bulldog and Toucan in 2006 before offering themselves to the highest bidder last year.

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1 Comment »Posted by Tom on January 25th 2008 in BT Broadband, Broadband, Carphone Warehouse, O2 Broadband, Orange Broadband, Pipex, Tiscali



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One Response to “Tiscali to do a Pipex?”

  1. fanta said on 30 Jan 2008 at 3:52 pm #

    Pompei ero victum!

    Tiscali seem to have done an excellent job of pissing off customers and investors alike. They throttled customers’ bandwidth preventing use of iTunes and online gaming, then shook up an already nervous customer base by covertly moving them over to their LLU network to save costs (causing further technical aggravation).

    When the BBC launched their iPlayer, Tiscali was one of the loudest ISPs in saying that the BBC should also pay for Tiscali to upgrade their network to cope with the demand, effectively taxing your TV license fees to keep investors happy. Techies aren’t happy with that whole debate.

    And talking of investors, Tiscali’s most recent acquisition is Excite Italia for over a million quid. Analysts aren’t impressed, considering it a complete waste of money.

    So will Tiscali have any customers and investors left? What’s to sell?


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