Topic: Tiscali

Tiscali has admitted that it kicked four of it's broadband users off after their being grassed up by the BPI.

The ISP says that it sent warning letters to 21 customers, but it seems the majority decided to keep their broadband connections by stopping sharing music over P2P connections.

It seems though that these will be the last casualties as Tiscali have said that they have ripped up the voluntary agreement with the BPI, which was the sort of deal the BPI would like to have in place. The problem seems to be that the BPI don't want to shoulder any of the costs involved, while the ISP thought it's agreement included a provision for sharing the cost.

The problem must be that the music industry is feeling hard up for cash due to file-sharing.

Tiscali has announced that it will offer customers technology to to offer its customers protection from dangerous online relationships.

The ISP has partnered up with online safety company Crisp in a bid to fight child grooming. It uses technology which they claim gives far better protection than traditional website-locking, blocking and word filters.
It analyses the content of online conversations to indentify inappropriate relationships that are initiated by predators wanting to groom, and potentially abuse, children. It also looks at sexual content, punctuation, aggression levels and sentence length, typing speed and vocabulary. Crisp compares all these elements with dynamic, minutely-detailed profiles of real-life groomers and genuine children of a variety of ages. Any potential grooming will be notified to parents either via a text message or email.

Crisp says that the software was independently tested by Cambridge University researchers and found to be 98.4 percent effective in identifying inappropriate relationships.
It will be available by a subscription service for £3.50 a month or £42 a year and will be available from March of this year.

Tiscali  has struck a deal with Disney-ABC International Television to allow it to show 400 hours of premium content to Tiscali TV subscribers.

This will allow customers on it's Entertainment Mix, who can view C1 which is Tiscali's VOD channel, to access shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs.

Customers can choose to subscribe to Tiscali TV from £19.99, which also includes up to 8Mb broadband, a free wireless router and set-top box and free weekend UK and international calls.

Tiscali has caused a bit of a stir with it's traffic management and has been forced to reverse a software installation after a mass of complaints.

The problem happened when engineers installed an upgrade on it's Cisco kit last week but saw customers complaining of  poor speeds due to it's traffic management, applications to suffer included iTunes P2P and Usenet. During peak times, 5pm and 9pm, some broadband users were getting speeds of 10Kbps while others found many sites blocked.

The problem arose as Tiscali and one of those ISPs who enforce traffic management especially during peak periods, while many think that this is unfair it's got to be remembered that the price that Tiscali offers 'unlimited' broadband would be unviable without it.

Althought this problem first came to light last week it seems the Tiscali engineers are still trying to fix them problems.

Tiscali is set to outsource support for the Pipex Broadband and Voice services to cheaper countries such as North Africa and India starting in January 2008.

The bad news is that it could mean the end of up to 650 job losses in it's UK call centres, which will start in January and take place over three stages until April.

The Italian owned telco acquired Pipex for £210m in September which netted it an additional 570,000 broadband and voice customers.

Tiscali UK has finally signed an agreement with Irish sports broadcaster Setanta to offer three premium sports channels on Tiscali's UK broadband-based television service.

The ISP has recently expanded it's internet TV service and plans to reach 10 million homes by the end of the year and will provide more than 80 channels of content. Those wishing to add Setanta will have to pay an extra £9.99 a month, but the agreement doesn't include an annual contract.

Tiscali, who have around 1.5 million broadband customers in the UK are to expand it's HomeChoice broadband TV (IPTV) service to cover most of the UK.

At the present the service only has around 50,000 customers in and around the home counties which were part of the Homechoice when the  IPTV provider was purchased by Tiscali last year. By the end of the year it homes to have the potential to reach 10 million homes and is targeting half a million of these to sign up to the service which is plugging the gap filled by those who want more than the basic freeview digital channels but do not want to pay for a full satellite or cable service.

Along with the broadband and IPTV service users will also receive free phone calls depending on the package, the basic one will start at £19.99 a month or £24.99 for the top package.
If customers still want more then an extra £22 will see them be able to watch the Sky sports channels which shows two thirds of televised Premier League soccer while Tiscali is also in talks with Irish broadcaster Setanta which shows the other live games.

While this is a step in the right direction, having the kids surfing and dad trying to watch the footie will only end up in rows unless customers live close to the exchange and are able to obtain a good connection. True IPTV is really a dream for most of us until BT finally start pushing Fibre-to-the-Premises.

Tiscali who are the UK’s fourth largest ISP have done a deal with Irish broadcaster Setanta to bring Premier League football coverage to its customers.

The ISP has already picked up the Sky basic channels after Virgin Media publicly fell out with Sky, but live premier football should bring more punters in. Setanta paid £392m to the Premier League for it's live broadcasts and having already done deals with BTVision and Virgin Media it seems as if the gamble is paying off.

Tiscali have not released any details of the pricing or availability of the broadcasts, but BT Vision customers who have a minimum contact of £17.99 a month get 46 live and 242 'near live' games while Virgin customers offers it free if customers have both their £20.50 XL package and take phone services from them.

Tiscali has added more content to it's Tiscali TV service following a deal with Sky.

In addtion to it's deal with Universal Pictures earlier this month, now it will be able to show the Sky basic package including Sky One on it's IPTV connection, which also includes the Sky Sports and Sky Movies. This may be a snub to Virgin Media who had Sky's channels cut after a dispute about payment earlier this year.

The Tiscali triple-play package which includes 2Mbps broadband, TV and free weekend calls costs £14.99 per month was launched in March this year.

Tiscali is dropping it's 1Mbps prduct down to  £7.99 for the first three months and £12.99 thereafter.

At the same time, certain customers in connected via Tiscali's own network could see them receive free line rental as part of a promotion to encourage people to sign up to their home phone and broadband bundles. While this is good news to those who live near a Tiscali LLU area it means that those who don't will have to fork out an extra £100 a year for the same service. This is something which is becoming increasing common with LLU providers which AOL has been criticised for.