The X-Factor may have missed out on a Christmas number one this year, but TalkTalk believes the hit show it sponsored played a star role in it more than trebling analysts expectations for net new broadband customers in the last three months of 2009.
Figures out yesterday show that the ISP acquired 36,000 net new broadband [...]

You won’t be seeing any more of the Tiscali logo as the brand is officially decommissioned.

Now the Government’s put a timetable in place for its plans to disconnect persistent online pirates, one ISP is considering a counter-attack that could see more than individual file-shares up in court. TalkTalk says it may resort to legal action if Lord Peter Mandelson continues with his plans – and it’s not the only one unhappy with the business secretary.

The UK’s biggest residential ISP has just posted it’s first trading statement since it acquired its former rival Tiscali. And despite its newest brand losing over sixty thousand customers in period in question, the TalkTalk Group has declared a “stronger than expected quarter for customer growth.” However, its forecast for mobile broadband isn’t so positive.

The UK’s biggest ISP has announced it has signed up to BT Broadband’s fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) testing plans – along with some developments closer to home.

The deal is done. Carphone Warehouse has bought Tiscali’s UK assets for £235m which it claims makes TalkTalk the largest residential broadband provider in the UK with a combined subscriber base of 4.25m.
SamKnows queried TalkTalk’s maths, given that BT claims to have 4.6m subscribers. TalkTalk’s rationale, it explains, is that of these BT users 700,000 [...]

First they were, then they weren’t, then everyone thought they might be again but they weren’t but now, finally, Carphone Warehouse is being reported to have made an informal offer of £275m for Tiscali’s UK assets.
This is believed to be way below the price Tiscali had been seeking – it turned down an offer for [...]

TalkTalk has today announced a £50 incentive scheme to attract Tiscali customers concerned over the ISP’s future.
It would appear to be the final stage of a long battle for ownership of Tiscali’s customers which, earlier this month, saw TalkTalk linked once again with the ailing Italian ISP shortly after its shares had been delisted [...]

Carphone Warehouse is considering a last-minute bid for the UK broadband arm of ISP Tiscali. The company, which is on the verge of administration and has been suspended from the Italian stock exchange, was being wooed by BSkyB until the deal appeared to fall apart on pricing issues. However, the media behemoth has recently renewed [...]

Tiscali’s shares have been suspended on the Milan stock exchange after falling 40% and a debt interest payment will be missed after talks with BSkyB about acquiring Tiscali(UK) came to an end.
With a market capitalisation on suspension of about €100m but a reported €500m of debt it seems that receivership and a fire sale of [...]

Sky unveiled quarterly figures which it suggests makes it the country’s fastest growing broadband provider and warned rivals that it feels there is still much growth yet to come through converting more of its 9.4m satellite television customers to its broadband offering.
The company has maintained fourth place in the UK market (behind BT, Virgin Media [...]

Carphone Warehouse has confirmed to SamKnows it is no longer pursuing a purchase of Tiscali, leaving Sky as the sole suitor for the Anglo-Italian ISP that has been for sale throughout most of 2008.
Although Carphone Warehouse believes it will be ‘nip and tuck’ whether it will continue to occupy third place in the UK ISP [...]

We’re currently deploying a large batch of Performance Monitoring units that will form the basis of our next report. Keen readers of the site will know that a few months back we sought volunteers for the project via a posting in the news here. Well, we took over 1000 registrations in a day, which was [...]

Carphone Warehouse is reported to still be in talks to buy Tiscali. The Italian-owned ISP had been hoping to set up an auction between Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse this summer but Vodafone pulled out of the process, believing Tiscali had valued itself too highly.
Tiscali is believed to still be talking to Sky about a possible [...]

Broadband providers and entertainment companies are queuing up to criticise BBC Worldwide, ITV and C4 coming together to form a proposed joint online catch-up service, Kangaroo.
The potential service has been referred to the Competition Commission following concerns it may prove anti-competitive. The government decision has meant those opposed to the one-stop shop approach have been [...]

Thus, owner of Demon Internet, looks set to finally be owned by Cable & Wireless.
Despite the board rejecting C&W’s offer of 165p per share, which was increased to 180p at the end of June, it has now virtually conceded defeat. The turnaround has been prompted by Thus not receiving comparable offers from a ‘white knight’ [...]

After conceding to SamKnows that the property slump was having an impact on its broadband sales Carphone Warehouse has now roughly halved the number of new customers it expects to connect this year, from 400,000 to between 200,000 to 250,000.
However the latest figures from the group also revealed what it is admitting as ‘disruption’ causing [...]

The ice cold relationship between the music industry and the ISPs it expects to police the internet is showing signs of thawing, but only a little and only after the threat of government legislation.
The six leading ISPs have agreed to send out educational letters to subscribers the BPI believes have been downloading music illegally. BT, [...]

Last week we broke the news of a BT letter to Tiscali customers, marketing themselves as a safe haven for Tiscali customers concerned about the ISP’s future.
After hinting to us last week that they were considering legal action, Tiscali have this afternoon provided confirmation in the form of the following statement:
Tiscali UK Limited has issued [...]

BT have caused a bit of a stir this week by mailing a personalised letter to current or former Tiscali group broadband customers (these include Pipex, Freedom2Surf and Nildram). A photograph of one of the letters is available here, having been discussed in various forums earlier this week.
The letter points out the attempts by Tiscali [...]