According to recent reports Carphone Warehouse is set to make a bid for the UK arm of Italian broadband company Tiscali.

According to recent reports Britain’s third largest broadband provider, Carphone Warehouse, is set to make a bid for the UK arm of Italian broadband provider Tiscali. The report claims that Tiscali had valued its UK broadband business at around six hundred million pounds, but Carphone Warehouse is reportedly going to be bidding just four hundred and fifty million pounds for it.

Tiscali was apparently looking to get rid of its UK assets by June of this year. It is the fourth largest broadband provider in the UK, with around 1.8 million subscribers. Carphone Warehouse is the third largest provider, and if its bid is successful it will add Tiscali to its Talk Talk operation. This could catapult Carphone Warehouse from third place to the top, as it would have 4.6 million customers giving it more than thirty percent share in the market and allowing it to overtake giants such as BT and Virgin Media.

The report suggest that there are other parties that are also interested in placing a bid for Tiscali UK, and this includes Vodafone, Sky, and BT. However, due to past problems and the already huge share of the market that it owns BT is unlikely to be successful with its bid, according to some industry officials.

Tiscali did try and sell its UK broadband operations in June of this year to interested parties, but was asking for more money than the parties were prepared to part with. However, since this time shares in Tiscali have plummeted by more than one third, and officials think that the communications firm will now be more likely to consider lower bids such as that being put forward by Carphone Warehouse.