back to article Tiscali confirms sell-off is on the table

Tiscali has ditched its CEO and is mulling options to sell off its broadband business, including its two-million-strong UK subscriber base. As expected, Tomasso Pompei has been replaced in the chief executive's chair by board member Mario Rosso. According to Italian reports, Rosso is seen as an ally of Tiscali's founder and …

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  1. Ed
    Dead Vulture

    Nildram

    As a Nildram customer, things are getting somewhat confusing! Nildram owned by Pipex owned by Tiscali owned by ???. I'd say Vodaphone are a likely bet - they don't own an ISP yet while Sky do...

  2. Michael
    Boffin

    About time they went ....

    The whole "consolidation" thing that's happening is that the customers started voting with their feet. I suppose they're hoping someone will buy them out of the hole they dug with their bad business model, but from what I've been seeing, their share price (TIS.MI) is actually FALLING .

    (Insult to injury...or maybe they have a pensions shortfall..????)

    Ah well.. the moral of the story is, look after your customers, and they'll look after you.

    As it's a friday , i would go out and party on this news alone, but i might wait to see if SCO makes it thru the weekend

  3. Fred
    Heart

    Aye rite

    that will make my life jumpering even easier!

  4. Keith T
    IT Angle

    Not much different from Cable TV companies

    When cable TV finally got off the ground in the UK there were loads of companies selling it. Quickly that number narrowed down and eventually we're left with a small handful of big players.

    It's only expected that broadband goes the same way as the rest of services getting lumped together. I'm waiting for the next round of venture capitalist buy-outs which ends up with me trying to work out if I'm paying a French or German water company for both my gas and internet.

    As usual the customers are praying that a takeover will improve services -- unlikely as they will become even smaller fish.

    I'm not looking forward to becoming a customer of BTMicroHoo, myself.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Numpties

    These bloody idiots only bought Pipex a few months ago and now they reviewing thier strategic approach to the Broadband business? Do they even know what the word "strategy" even means?

    Could Tiscali even *buy* a clue on how to run a business? Jee-ee-ay-zusss...

  6. Chad H.
    Stop

    What's a fair price?

    customer service thats considered a joke; not profitable; network clearly under strain... You couldnt pay me to run it as an ISP, although my previous offer of 2x crayons + milk is open, I might be able to make enough money out of selling the equipment for scrap to make it worthwhile.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just what do they have to sell?

    I see that there are several different supplier names owned by Tiscali, and the news of the last few moths is that they're all on the same broadband infrastructure now. Pipex isn't an ISP, it's a customer list. And, I suppose, a domain name for customer web pages.

    So will a buyer of Tiscali do the same?

    Or are the alleged 2 million customers too many for anyone else to absorb cheaply?

  8. Shaun Sheppard

    They won't be bought for their network

    If someone was to buy Tiscali, they'd be buying it for their customers rather than the technology or network.

  9. Dick Emery
    IT Angle

    Bulldog

    Don't forget us Bulldog folk. Thus far we have avoided any of Tiscali/pipex network and been left with our nice fast uncongested, unfiltered, non-traffic shaped and uncapped connections due to it using NTL's backbone capacity and unbundled loop.

  10. John

    I'm still switching

    After them blocking Opera, I was enraged, but I'm lethargic so I gave them another go. Then I found that you can't used the full BBC iPlayer app with them. Final strike. I'm out as soon as I find a viable alternative and get my MAC.

  11. Thomas Jerome
    Coat

    marching orders

    Toucan Mobile piggybacks on the T-Mobile network, so maybe Deutsche Telecom will buy up to get a foothold into the UK market.

    Not the first time the Germans have had to take over from a bunch of inept Italians...

  12. Aaron

    Good news for their customers

    This is good news for their customers, at the end of the day I personally consider Tiscali to be the worst ISP in the market.

    Sure they have 2 million customers, a lot of them came from buying other isp's. They attract a lot of people who don't know any better by stupidly low prices. They have almost 0 customer service, their technical support is a joke (telling you to clear your temporary internet files to resolve a no sync issue on your router). Hell I even know for a fact that they have conference called other ISP's to get their support people to try and help their customers in the past. Add onto that the random blocking of so many thing's the web has to offer.

    With any luck someone will buy their customer base and run the service properly, or at least offer the customer a get of from those contracts so they can be free to go to who they want to be with.

  13. Edward Martin

    tiscali

    unfortunately, the company suffers from very poor management, beleive me, I know. as we speak we are setting up another call centre in the phillipines - if you think getting through to india is bad you haven't seen nothing yet.

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