Carphone Warehouse is to buy the UK assets of Italian internet service provider Tiscali for £236m.

The deal, which is expected to be completed by the end of June, will create the UK’s largest home broadband provider with 4.25m subscribers.

Tiscali had previously been in talks with BSkyB, but negotiations broke down earlier this year.

Carphone Warehouse currently provides broadband services under its TalkTalk brand and via AOL Broadband.

Carphone chief executive Charles Dunstone said that the company would eventually just have a single brand.

But he added that Tiscali e-mail addresses would survive.

“We know the business well and the fit with TalkTalk is perfect,” Mr Dunstone said.

Completion of the deal will give TalkTalk more than 25% of the residential broadband market.

Carphone expects it to boost its earnings by 10% in the next year.

Shares in Carphone Warehouse were up 3.8% by midmorning.

Tiscali shares, which were earlier suspended in Italy pending the statement, were up 8%.

‘Competitive UK market’

Tiscali has struggled with its debt, which stands at about 600m euros ($805m;£535m).

It is the fifth largest internet service provider in the UK, with 1.45m broadband customers.

“The transaction should be considered in light of the strong consolidating trend in the highly competitive UK market, evaluating Tiscali UK activities as a whole, thus preserving the value of its industrial assets and know-how within the Carphone Warehouse Group,” said Mario Rosso, chief executive of Tiscali.

Carphone announced plans last month to separate its mobile phone business from its TalkTalk fixed line and broadband operations.

It operates 2,400 mobile phone shops across Europe in a joint venture with the US retailer Best Buy.

Article from: my3G.co.uk

Orange UK set to take a bite out of O2’s Apple.

According to the people over at theiphoneblog, the Apple iPhone 3G (possibly the new refreshed version) has appeared on Orange’s internal systems.

This could mean that the new refreshed iPhone’s which are due to go onsale this June will no longer be exclusive to O2 UK.

No confirmation has yet been given by Apple, Orange or O2 but personally this could be a good thing for the UK as many current iPhone 3G customers have suffered frequent problems with the supposed 3G services via O2.

Article Written by: my3G.co.uk

With T-Mobile’s financial results coming this week and expected to show big losses, will a merger with 3 be the next move for owners Deutsche Telekom?

Samsung launches I7500, The Company’s First Android-Powered Mobile Phone.
Seoul (Korea Newswire) April 27, 2009 05:08 PM — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a leading mobile phone provider, today unveiled the I7500, its first Android-powered mobile phone. With a launch of I7500, Samsung became the first company among the global top three mobile phone manufacturers to unveil an Android-powered phone.

“Samsung is among the earliest members of the Open Handset Alliance and has been actively moving forward to introduce the most innovative Android mobile phone,” said JK Shin, Executive Vice President and Head of Mobile Communication Division in Samsung Electronics. “With Samsung’s accumulated technology leadership in mobile phone industry and our consistent strategy to support every existing operating system, I believe that Samsung provides the better choices and benefits to our consumers” he added.

The Samsung I7500 is a cutting-edge smartphone, featuring a 3.2″ AMOLED full touch screen and 7.2Mbps HSDPA and WiFi connectivity, giving users access to Google™ Mobile services and full web browsing at blazing speeds.

The Samsung I7500 offers users access to the full suite of Google services, including Google Search™, Google Maps™, Gmail™, YouTube™, Google Calendar™, and Google Talk™. The integrated GPS receiver enables the comprehensive use of Google Maps features, such as My Location, Google Latitude, Street View, local search and detailed route description. Hundreds of other applications are available in Android Market. For example, the application Wikitude, a mobile travel guide, allows consumers to access details of unknown sights via location-based Wikipedia articles.

Based on Samsung’s proven product leadership, Samsung I7500 comes with latest multimedia features. The large and vivid 3.2″AMOLED display ensures the brilliant representation of multimedia content and enjoyable full touch mobile experience. Along with supporting a 5-megapixel camera and various multimedia codec formats, the I7500 also provides a long enough battery life (1500mAh) and generous memory capacity up to 40GB (Internal memory: 8GB, External memory: Up to 32GB) to enjoy all the applications and multimedia content. The phone also boasts its slim and compact design with mere 11.9mm thickness.

The Samsung I7500 will be available in major European countries from June, 2009.

News Source: my3G