Tiscali to buy Pipex broadband?

Newswires and media full in last few hours of reports that Pipex is about to announce the sale of its 1m UK broadband customers to Italian Tiscali for c£210m. Yet another example of the rampant consolidation in the highly competitive UK Broadband sector.

What Tiscali has to understand though is that it is just as important to keep customers as to gain new ones. (they pay more and they cost nothing to gain) Tiscali service levels and associated customer service levels are absolutely awful. I know - I am a Tiscali customer who suffered two weeks without being able to send any emails last month. For Tiscali to have allowed themselves to be hit by spammers was bad enough but the way they treated their customers hit by the problem was appalling. It took them five days to admit that they had a problem - blaming their customers until then!

Surely Pipex can only improve that?

Note - 2.00pm on Friday this deal CONFIRMED. Tiscali to get E650m credit line from Intesa Sanpaolo and JP Morgan to finance Also considering an equity issue of E150m. Tiscali said it expected cumulated synergies of about £150m at the core earnings level over a four-year period, with integration costs of about £50m.