Carphone Warehouse buys AOL UK

For £370m

[Moff]

[news.bbc.co.uk...]

BBC business editor Robert Peston said Carphone Warehouse, owner of the TalkTalk broadband and phone offering, was paying £370m for the operation.

The UK's largest residential internet provider is currently NTL, which has 2.9 million home customers, followed by BT on 2.2 million.

Carphone Warehouse is now in third place.

[edited by: Moff at 12:31 pm (utc) on Oct. 11, 2006]

[rj87uk]

I think this is pretty big news!

AOL UK has 2.1 million customers across the country - 600,000 on dial-up and 1.5 million with broadband connections.

It was also on the news:

News of the deal came after Carphone Warehouse said strong demand for its existing TalkTalk broadband offer meant it was costing £20m more than originally expected.

[sem4u]

Yes this is big news for the UK ISP business and Carphone Warehouse.

I am kind of surprised that Vodafone didn't buy AOL UK, as they don't own a UK ISP and Orange and 02 now do.

[TimmyMagic]

I'm no expert, but I think they've paid too much. Sure they have lots of subscribers, but I think this has a lot to do with marketing rather than it being a good product. I'm certainly not a fan.

Also, since AOL stands for America On Line (or Online), I find it quite funny that they call it AOL UK. It doesn't make sense - or is it just me?

[sem4u]

I'm not a fan of AOL myself but my friends who use the service think that it is great.

[mack]

This will be all about trying to tie subscribers into one monthly bill. Phone and internet. Makes sense I recon. They now have a large subscriber base to market to.

Mack.