Sky enters talks over Tiscali deal

Sky have entered negotiations to aquire currently fourth largest ISP Tiscali, after rival bidder Carphone Warehouse – which runs its own Talk Talk and owns the UK arm of AOL – reportedly pulled out of the auction.

The triple-play provider is thought to have put forward an indicative offer of £450 million for the Italian company’s UK operations, with the potential for a further price drop. The potential purchase is seen as a strategic departure for the company, which currently offers free broadband to customers who also sign up for to its television package. 20% of Sky TV subscribers have taken up the offer so far.

If Sky carries the deal forward, it will become the third largest UK broadband provider with 3.6 million, overtaking Carphone Warehouse and creeping up behind its main rival Virgin Media, which hopes to improve on its current 3.8 million customer base in its third quarter report, to be announced this Thursday. BT is currently in pole position as Britian’s biggest broadband provider. The telecoms giant is thought to have walked away from the long-running auction, along with Vodafone.

Earlier on in the bidding, Vodafone had been considered a strong player as the only company willing to buy up both Tiscali’s UK and Italian broadband operations, but has pulled out since the business’s valuation has fallen.

Tiscali has been trying to find a buyer since May. The provider has around 1.2 million broadband users in the UK, although it is believed to have lost market share recently, perhaps due to news that the company is planning to up sticks and sell to the highest bidder. Last Friday Sky revealed that its broadband take-up had risen to 1.8 million customers.

Customers flock to free laptop deals – but are they worth it?

Mobile broadband packages which come with a ‘free’ laptop are set to become a must-have gift this Christmas, overtaking standalone dongles.

Consumers looking to save money or defer the cost of buying new technology are driving sales of mobile broadband pay monthly deals which include a laptop in the price. Networks and electronics retailers such as 3, Vodafone, Carphone Warehouse and PC World are offering free laptops or netbooks on certain mobile phone contracts usually lasting 18 to 24 months, and retailers have experienced a sharp increase in sales of free laptop deals in recent months, by as much as 23% of overall sales since July.

Mobile retailer Phones4U has reported considerable growth since it launched a ‘free’ laptop deal, predicting that such bundles will prove a popular choice this Christmas.

“Since launching laptop-broadband deals on Phones4u.co.uk, we have seen significant sales growth month-on-month and predict that laptop-broadband deals will be top-sellers this Christmas,” stated a Phones 4U spokesman.

A piece in The Guardian this week suggested that 3 and Vodafone currently offer the best deals on mobile broadband-laptop bundles.

However, though deals including a free laptop may seem like an inexpensive option in the run-up to a credit crunch Christmas, they are likely to cost you far more in the long run than if you bought a standalone dongle and laptop separately. The cost of laptops advertised as being ‘free’ is in fact spread over the length of the contract.

For example, a 24 month deal on Vodafone which comes with a ‘free’ Dell Inspiron Mini 9 ultraportable will set you back £25 a month, costing a total of £600 over the two years. Bought on its own, the Mini 9 will cost you around £300. Of course, you get the data contract as well, but with mobile broadband prices set to come down further in the coming months, you may well regret being tied down to a 2 year contract.

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BT gives away mobile broadband on business tariffs

BT is to offer “free” mobile broadband connections to its business internet customers.

The telelcoms giant is giving away a mobile dongle and connection to customers who renew or sign up to new contracts on selected BT Business Total Broadband tariffs.

The service makes use of Vodafone’s 3G network, which has performed well on mobile broadband speed tests with the fastest upload speeds of the five big players. The service has a relatively meagre download limit of 1GB, but does include 2,000 free minutes a month on BT’s Openzone network of Wi-Fi hotspots.

Business packages starting at £27 a month include an ADSL broadband connection, mobile broadband and Wi-Fi. “We’re adding value to our broadband offer at a time when businesses are up against it on costs,” David Hughes, BT’s director of wireless broadband told PC Pro. “It allows them to stay connected all the time.”

The deal is currently available only to businesses which renew or take out new deals on BT Business Total Broadband option 2 or 3. There is currently no upgrade package for the millions of business customers that BT has already signed up, although the company has said it is considering such an option.

BT has said that it will trial the deal with business customers before taking it to consumers. “We’ve started with business – we’ll look at whether it’s suitable for consumers after that,” said Neil Laidler, director of Mobility BT Business.

T-Mobile and 3 join BT for 3G network support

Mobile operators T-Mobile and 3 have signed a five-year agreement with BT to connect 7,500 of their base stations to BT‘s high speed next-generation broadband network.

The deal was struck between BT Wholesale and Mobile Broadband Network Ltd (MBNL), a joint venture between 3 and T-Mobile. Mobile Broadband Network was established to provide 98% of the UK with access to high-speed HSDPA mobile broadband by 2010, thus making it the largest network in the country.

Mobile phone providers are being urged to increase their data transmission speeds as more and more users make wider use of mobile broadband. This need for speed has been highlighted as part of the five-year plan. Rival mobile operator Vodafone already signed a similar deal in April, with O2 following suit last May. Orange is now the only major mobile operator in the UK without such a deal.

As part of the agreement, BT will lighten the load of the network operators by carrying data from their mobile broadband services over the newly planned fibre optic network. This is known as backhaul. The deal will be worth several hundred million pounds – a large and welcome boost to BT’s business arm, which has suffered from a recent drop of revenues as companies such as Carphone Warehouse have stopped using its products.

The technology director at T-Mobile UK, Emin Gurdenli said: “This agreement with BT will make sure backhaul is not a constraint now or in the future at a time when T-Mobile is experiencing strong growth in mobile broadband and other mobile data services.”

The release of the Apple 3G iPhone, Google’s G1 and other smartphones such as the N96 are fuelling the current popularity of mobile broadband. As demand further increases, mobile providers will need to make sure that the networks they control can handle the increased volume of data traffic.

The managing director from BT Wholesale Markets, Brian Fitzpatrick said: “BT now supports the base station connectivity requirements of four of the five mobile players in the UK market, bringing our economies of scale to a hugely important element of the communications marketplace.”

O2 Broadband MacBook bundle rumour denied

It has been officially announced that rumours about leading UK mobile network and ADSL2+ providers O2 Broadband would bundling Apple MacBook laptops with their home broadband and mobile broadband products are nothing more than that.

An O2 spokeswoman confirmed that there are “no such plans to launch an Apple MacBook laptop offer,” and that the rumours are “untrue”.

Mobile network and broadband rivals Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and 3 Mobile have all done well out of broadband and laptop bundle deals, and it was thought that O2 would want to get in on the action.

It was announced earlier this month that Carphone ISP TalkTalk would be giving away iPod Touches as part of a September prize draw, and as both O2 and the Carphone Warehouse have the exclusive right to sell the Apple iPhone in stores across the UK, and it was thought that O2 would want to work out a similar deal with regard to Apple products.

Internet rumour mongers put two and two together to make five, and, well, you know how these things happen.

Industry giants unite to push mobile broadband in laptops

Mobile phone companies, chip makers and laptop manufacturers are joining forces to push built-in support for mobile broadband technology on laptop computers.

The alliance will build wireless chips into the computers which will accelerate current 3G speeds and work with future 4G networks. A service mark will identify laptops with the integrated mobile technology. The branded laptops are expected to be on shop shelves in 91 countries by Christmas.

At their fastest, current mobile internet technologies, which include High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and Long Term Evolution, support web browsing speeds of up to 7 megabits per second. However, such high speeds are currently available only at airports and in parts of central London.

“It’s comparable to fixed broadband services and close to what you get in a Wi-Fi hot spot,” said Mike O’Hara, a spokesman for the GSM Alliance, which brokered the deal to produce the modules and build them into laptops. The GSM Alliance is a trade body that represents 80% of the world’s mobile phone companies.

“You can go to an operator’s store, buy a laptop and it will be already fitted so you can go online instantly,” O’Hara added. “That’s a powerful proposition. There’s a natural evolution such as we saw with Wi-Fi which at first used to need an external card and became embedded.”

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Sky’s the limit, claim Virgin Media

Here we go again. Virgin Media have called BS on bitter rivals BSkyB over their recent claims with regard to being the first UK ISP to offer punters truly unlimited broadband.

Sky recently removed their fair usage policy from their premier up to 16Mbps Broadband Max service, which means that punters can actually download however much they want, without fear of running into some sort of phantom usage limit and being forced to pay infinity billion pounds in charges; “We believe that we are now the only major broadband provider to offer truly ‘unlimited’ broadband,” crowed the Sky spokesperson at the time.

It was presumably this statement that got Virgin Media’s hackles up. “Virgin Media has always believed that customers should be able to enjoy their broadband as much as they want,” sulked the Virgin official.

“We were the first ISP to provide unlimited broadband packages to our entire customer base, including both cable and ADSL, and have never imposed any form of ‘fair use’ policy.”

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Apple to give away MacBook laptops with O2 Broadband?

Word on the street says that Apple and O2 are about to launch their own laptop and broadband bundle deal, in a bid to emulate the popular connection-and-computer combos that have been on offer from the likes of Orange, AOL and the Carphone Warehouse for the last year or so.

The two companies are thought to be offering customers who sign up for either of O2′s mobile and home broadband services the choice of purchasing an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop either free, or for a heavily discounted price.

We presume, given the pricey nature of Apple stuff that the laptops won’t be free, but we can at least expect some form of price subsidy as part of the bargain. Then again, Apple surprised everyone with the release of the new iPhone 3G, which turned out to be significantly cheaper than everyone expected, so we could be in for a similar surprise this time round.

Currently, 3 Mobile are offering punters who sign up for their 5GB Broadband Plus plan for 24 Months a free HP 550 laptop, and Orange are giving away an Asus Eee PC 900 with every 18 Month 3GB contract.

AOL customers who sign up for the Wireless Plus package can currently claim a free Acer Aspire 5315 Laptop to every customer who signs up, and Vodafone are giving away a Sony NR32 with their 24 Month 3GB mobile broadband deal.

Vodafone let off the hook by ASA ruling

Vodafone have recently attracted a number of complaints over a recent promotional poster campaign that ran with the tagline; “Don’t get left in the dark. Unlimited Facebook on Vodafone. Make the most of now.” The ad, which also appeared in print, also states, in a noticeably smaller font size, that the service comes with a 500MB monthly data allowance, and that an FUP was in place.

Customers complained to the Advertising Standards Agency on the grounds that the advert was contradictory and misleading, but a report this week shows that the complaints have not been upheld.

“We noted the information provided by Vodafone demonstrated that only a very small proportion of their customers had exceeded the fair-use policy limited and that action was likely to be a request to moderate their usage in the first instance,” said ASA on their website. “We acknowledged that the vast majority of customers used only a small amount of the available allowance and concluded that the existence of a fair-use policy did not contradict the claim ‘unlimited mobile internet’.”

The official standpoint on what constitutes ‘unlimited’ is a little unhelpful; an ASA spokesperson was quoted telling PC Pro last Wednesday that: “[the] way it works at the moment is that it is unlimited for the majority of users. It’s only a tiny minority of users that would receive a warning. We think that while it’s a tiny minority it’s okay.”

Carphone rumour reignites interest in Tiscali

Carphone Warehouse has again signalled interest in taking over the home broadband and fixed-line operations of Tiscali in the UK and Italy. The Milanese comms company announced it was looking out for a buyer of its European ops earlier this year, and bidding for the Tiscali broadband tentacles began in April.

At one point, Vodafone, the worlds biggest mobile network, looks set to snap up Tiscali, in a bid to leapfrog its UK mobile rivals Orange and O2, who both have a strong presence in the UK broadband market. However, Vodafone pulled out in June following a falling out over Tiscali’s valuation of its assets.

Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk/AOL) were rumoured to be interested, but after the Vodafone fracas, even they seemed disinterested. Now it appears that a buyout of Tiscali is back on the cards, although this time the offer appears to be just for its British and Italian customers – previously the deal was thought to be for all of Tiscali’s continental concerns.

If such a deal goes ahead, the acquisition would see Carphone Warehouse overtake BT and clinch the top spot in the UK Broadband stakes. A merger of the two would see the total combined consumer base swell to a figure in excess of 4.6million, which would leave BT trailing behind in second place, and the Big 6 becoming a Big 5.

Carphone Warehouse currently serves around 2.8 million UK customers through both TalkTalk and AOL UK. Tiscali, through its own subscriber base and that of Pipex, which it annexed in July 2007, serves a figure just shy of 2 million; 1.84 million after losing 37,000 subscribers last quarter.

In a related story, Tiscali began legal proceedings against BT in July, after it transpired that the market leader, wise to news of a sell-off, played on customers understandable fears by sending out letters to Tiscali subscribers, urging them to switch to a provider that is “complete and is here to stay,” (i.e. BT).