"The UK gets wind" ?

Perhaps this is the price to be paid when an ISP charges below the going rate for broadband; it feels good whilst it lasts and if it works for you, but if the economic model is not one for profit, it will not last forever.

In this case, perhaps no one wants to buy Tiscali because its balance sheets are poor, even if Tiscali thinks that this does not matter - "...never mind the quality madame..." ...just check out our customer numbers...

Personally I prefer an ISP that is broadly in business for profit and able to offer a few thrills, er, frills, such as free phone support, rapid support call answering, lack of tie in linking telephone line rental and call charges to provision of broadband. I never liked that last trick. And I want my ISP to be reliable, here today, here tomorrow - else why would I ever be able to trust them with email facilities,etc.?

Well done Vodafone.

Vodafone can't even get their mobile 'broadband' working, never mind a fixed line service, and they've been doing mobile communications for years...

I'm afraid Tiscali just can't deliver. It's IPTV service that was due to be launched in late Feb has errrrr, not been launched, its just available to a few thousand subscribers who we're inherited from a former london tv company. The national launch of IPTV has just not happened and probably will not. I don't know why Tiscali doesn't just gracefully give up to the likes of Virgin Media or BT and let them take their subscribers. Everyone wants to jump on the TV delivery band wagon, but before doing it, they should have a full understanding of what they are undertaking and the means to fund it fully.

If you are wanting a reliable TV / Internet / Telco service, it pays to be with an established company as I learned at my own costs. 'Wanna be' providers just think they can set up, sell off and make a quick buck. Established Telcos have been burned by purchasing poorly set up companies in the past (NTL CableTel - Cable & Wireless, Videotron etc) and are wary of buying companies like Tiscali and inheriting a 'pants' network costing millions to put right. Vodaphone should concentrate on it's own products and spend the money investing on their own subscriber bases from scratch, its much more cost effective than inheriting a pile of poo from someone else.

...they got a wiff of all the ex-Bulldog users running for the hills after it's anouncement that they were being 'moved' over to Tiscali's kit and billing.

with there fastest mobile broadband why invest in my opinion probobly the worst landline broadband company there is they already have vodafone at home mobile broadband and landline for 25 quid save themselves 1.6 billion and use it on something worthwhile like cheap calls from the usa better billing would be a better investment for all that money

I used to be with Pipex and was paying business rates 30 quid plus. These clowns took over and my Usenet connection vanished even though I was only on 60K bytes max. Tiscali are a disgrace and they got terminated PDQ. Their customer service is done by people whose second language is pidgin English.

Strange, then can you explain how I appear to pick up Sky, UKTV, etc down my Tiscali connection?

This article mentions "Vodafone's sudden disinterest". The word 'disinterest' means impartiality or lack of bias. The word needed to express a lack of interest is 'uninterest'.

For example, if some one is called upon to settle a dispute, they should be a 'disinterested' party, ie with nothing to gain or lose, but they should not be 'uninterested'.