AOL UK has put itself up for sale and is courting offers from interested parties.
BT and BSkyB are the two that have emerged in the press as leading the field and it promises to be another interesting twist in what is becoming an increasingly complicated UK broadband market.
AOL has decided that the impending price war between the ISPs – in their triple and quad play forms – is not its scene and is cashing in its UK business (which is thought to be profitable) as well as offloading its French and German operations.
I can’t see BT being allowed to buy out AOL as BT is top dog in the broadband market with 2.6m broadband customers and AOL is third with 2.2m customers, 1.3m of whom are broadband customers. So unless someone else comes in with a better offer Murdoch’s empire will roll on and BSkyB will become the third largest ISP in the UK.
The broadcaster is set to launch its full – and probably ‘free’ – broadband offering later this summer after buying Easynet for £211m last year and the addition of the AOL business would sit nicely with its satellite TV services, especially as other players such as BT move into on demand broadband TV services.
The consumer will probably win price-wise, but working out what is the best deal may become increasingly difficult when having to factor in mobile charges, broadband services, Pay TV services and fixed line services.
Communicationssupermarket.com won’t be far away I reckon.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment