| Tiscali
Tiscali offer a range of broadband, phone and digital TV packages and position themselves as being one of the cheapest and best value broadband providers in the UK.
Tiscali broadband packages start from just £6.49 a month for unlimited broadband and an inclusive free modem. Tiscali's Freeview digital TV is delivered via broadband and comes with a free set top box or. The Tiscali+ Digital Recorder is an optional upgrade allowing you to pause, rewind and record live TV.
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Tiscali History
Tiscali, named in part after a quaint little Sardinian village that was founded in biblical times, is an Italian owned company that burst onto the scene in 1998 when Italian telecommunications was deregulated. This allowed it to acquire many different ISPs around Europe, and in the UK this meant the acquisition of LineOne, a company that not many people remember these days. This meant that in the UK Tiscali was born in 2001 when they paid over £60 million for LineOne after the dot com bubble burst and everyone was feeling a little bit sheepish.
Over the years there have been some big changes to Tiscali, though not all of them will have been felt by the average UK users. Firstly the Italian parent company, having bought up and developed many smaller ISPs around Europe, proceeded to try and sell them off.
Whether this was simply in order to make a quick buck or whether it was as a result of management problems will probably never be made clear, but in the last three years Tiscali has been focused on the UK and Italian markets, accounting for 2.7 million customers between the two countries and with a large usership in the UK.
They began the noughties by offering both dialup and broadband services to users in the UK, with speeds starting at 512Kbps but soon rising to a maximum of 8Mbps when all of the ADSL+ technology was in place around the country. They were also one of the first ISPs to offer an unlimited broadband internet service.
Rather than literally giving their users unlimited access to the internet with no download restrictions their unlimited internet services are moderated by a fair use policy. Whilst this has been a bone of contention for some groups, unlimited packages offered by other ISPs are equally stringent on certain points.
Tiscali also began offering IPTV services in 2007 to compliment their broadband services, and also offer customer home phone packages, giving them the chance to offer 'triple play' deals providing all three for a fixed monthly fee. Tiscali TV gives users access to hundreds of digital channels and with the Tiscali+ PVR, the opportunity to store hours of their favourite shows or watch video on demand. Like BT and Virgin Media, Tiscali offer unique multimedia packages to suit a wide variety of audiences and price ranges, though the future of their TV service in the UK may come into question since the Italian branch has been shut down recently.
Big news has recently come from the Tiscali towers as the UK branch of the ISP is now owned by the Carphone Warehouse, or more specifically operated by their TalkTalk home phone and broadband company. Whilst this won't mean much until the deal is finalised in June 2009, there could be big changes coming the way of Tiscali customers around the UK if the new owners want to jig things around.
For now Tiscali, like most ADSL broadband providers, is waiting to see what the new 21CN networks that BT is currently trialing and intending to roll out in the coming years is going to mean for their business. Broadband technology is always changing, and you can expect that Tiscali, with their large customer base and buying power, will be at the forefront.
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