Tiscali SpA
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- Tiscali redirects here. For other uses see Tiscali (disambiguation)
| Tiscali SpA | |
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| Type | SpA |
|---|---|
| Founded | January 1998 |
| Headquarters | Cagliari, Italy |
| Key people | Vittorio Serafino (chairman), Tommaso Pompei (CEO), Renato Soru (Founder) |
| Industry | Communications and Media |
| Products | Communications |
| Revenue | €736,199 as of Dec 05 |
| Slogan | "Internet with a Passion" |
| Website | tiscali.com |
Tiscali SpA (ISE: IT0001453924) is a European telecommunications company, based in Cagliari, Italy, and provides internet and telecommunications services to Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. The company acquired many European Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throughout the late 1990s, although in recent years, a lot of those assets have been sold to other companies.
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[edit] Formation
Tiscali was formed in 1998 when the Italian telecommunications market was deregulated. Its name is formed from a 2000 year old village situated in Sardinia[1]. The company's original priority was internet access, which enabled the company to expand quickly during the dot-com boom. The company acquired, in quick succession, World Online (The Netherlands), Liberty Surf (France) and LineOne (UK), instantly giving it market presence in those countries. This made it the third largest Internet Service Provider in Europe, with presence in most European countries. Its founder, Renato Soru, was elected president of the Sardinian Autonomous Region in 2004.
[edit] Products
Each of Tiscali's regional companies offer many services, which may include:
[edit] Internet access
Tiscali offers a range of both dial-up and broadband packages. In the United Kingdom, the company provides speeds of 56K/s speed dial-up, 1Mb/s speed broadband (limited and unlimited), 2Mb/s speed broadband and 8Mb/s high-speed broadband to those lines that can support it. It has various dial-up packages, including a "pay-as-you-go" tariff, which the user will only be charged for their time spent online, similar to other "free" ISPs such as the defunct Freeserve.
[edit] Telephone
In addition to ISP services, Tiscali offers many phone packages alongside Internet access, including flat-rate monthly packages.
[edit] Television
In London, Tiscali UK operates an IPTV television service, Tiscali TV, previously known as Homechoice. Tiscali acquired the business in 2006 as a result of a merger with Homechoice's parent company, Video Networks. Tiscali TV is a triple-play service offering telephone, IPTV and Internet access packages(see below).
[edit] Network services
Tiscali's international arm, Tiscali Network, offers a range of professional services for businesses, including Global IP Connectivity, MPLS lines, Voice over IP and Network Monitoring[2].
[edit] Web portal
Tiscali runs similar web portals for each of its countries, which include features such as webmail, reviews, news, videos, dating, chat, radio, TV guide, streaming TV channels and others. All are available to anyone worldwide: a Tiscali connection is not required.
[edit] Tiscali 10.0
Tiscali 10.0 was Tiscali's integrated self-branded web browser, which was distributed with its dial-up Internet packages. It was produced by UltraBrowser Inc, and used Microsoft's Internet Explorer Trident rendering engine to display web pages. Since Tiscali's corporate re-branding exercise in 2004, the software has not been included in broadband installation packs as it features Tiscali's original logo and design layout, and generally was designed for those with dial-up packages. Its version number was matched to that of UltraBrowser's most recent version of their own browser. Tiscali now includes Internet Explorer as the default browser.
[edit] Sale of sub-companies
Starting in 2004, Tiscali sold off many of its regional sub-companies to native telecommunications operators in order to focus more on prime target areas.
- On 16 August 2004, Tiscali disposed of its Austrian branch, Tiscali Österreich GmbH, to Nextra Telecom GmbH.
- On 20 August 2004, Tiscali disposed of its South African branch, Tiscali (Pty), to MWEB Holdings (Pty) Ltd.
- On 23 August 2004, Tiscali disposed of its Norwegian branch, Tiscali AS, to Telenor Telecom Solutions AS
- On 30 August 2004, Tiscali disposed of its Swedish counterpart, Tiscali AB, to Spray Network AB, which is subisdary of Lycos.
- On 16 September 2004, Tiscali disposed of its Swiss counterpart, Tiscali AG, reaching an agreement with Smart Telecom AG.
- On 19 October 2004, Tiscali sold its South African mobile telephone network, Tiscali Mobile, to Vodacom.
- On 29 November 2004, Tiscali disposed of its Belgian subsidiary, Tiscali N.V, reaching an agreement with Scarlet Belgie Holding B.V (2004 milestones)
- On 1 February 2005, Tiscali sold its Danish company, Tiscali Denmark A/S, to Tele2 A/S.
- On 5 May 2005, Tiscali sold the French ISP, Liberty Surf to Telecom Italia (2005 milestones)
On October 11 2006, Tiscali announced that it was to focus on the UK and Italy as its prime ISP targets, with plans to introduce new services to them including a mobile network operator and new IPTV products to the United Kingdom by its acquisition of Homechoice [3]. It is not known what will happen to its other remaining regional sub-companies.
[edit] Criticisms of Tiscali
Although Tiscali offers unlimited broadband packages, the company has been known to "cap" individual usage.[4] Tiscali customers must comply with a Fair Usage Policy, which is intended to reduce the bandwidth required by the hosts. As a result, users who frequently use peer to peer or take up a considerable amount of bandwidth by downloading large files are often warned about their excessive usage and, if it continues, may have their usage "capped" during peak times (usually between 6pm and 11pm depending on which regional company provides the service).[5]
Tiscali also limits peer-to-peer traffic:[6] users of all P2P protocols will not get as much bandwidth using P2P protocols as they would get though, for example, HTTP. This limiting of traffic happens outside of 'peak usage' hours, and is a source of some discontent on Tiscali's [and most ADSL discussion] forums. It can often be impossible to connect to P2P programs using Tiscali.[7]
Tiscali has also become infamous for its frequent disconnections from Windows Live Messenger and other chat/gaming applications.[8] During peak hours, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for users to connect to these applications without frequent disconnections. Speeds are also very slow, with messages being sent and sometimes not received from both ends of the conversation.[9] File-sharing via these applications is often slower than dial-up. This does not appear to be an isolated problem, with virutally every Tiscali user experiencing these problems.[10] Tiscali have yet to offer any solution to these problems, with most suggestions being to reinstall the modem and software. This rarely makes any difference to Tiscali's service.
The British website ISPreviewUK cites the UK arm of Tiscali as consistently receiving the greatest number of complaints each week, the most significant issue to users being poor support. [11]
[edit] Video Networks Merger
On 14 August 2006, Tiscali UK completed a merger with competing telecommunications provider, Video Networks Limited (VNL)[12]. VNL currently operates the triple-play London media company, Homechoice, which offers IPTV, telephone packages and Internet access to users in the London area. It has been confirmed that the merged company will drop the brandname "Homechoice" for "Tiscali", because it is nationally known name, whereas Homechoice only operates in London. Video Networks now gets an 11.5% stake of Tiscali UK, in exchange for Tiscali gaining 100% control of Home Choice.[13]. It is not yet known whether Homechoice's TV services will be able to go national, although there have been rumours that its service will be extended to Manchester [14]. The merged company is expected to have 1.3 million customers in the UK[15].
