TalkTalk to get customer boost
Mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has made two acquisitions, pitting it against telecoms giants such as BT.

The retailer has acquired landline business Onetel from Centrica for£132 million. The deal will be completed on December 31.

Carphone also purchased the UK and Irish operations of Tele2, another landline supplier, for£8.5 million. It has about 188,000 UK customers and 36,000 customers in the Republic of Ireland. Carphone intends to migrate these customers onto its own network under the TalkTalk brand.

Onetel provides landline calls, landline rental, dial-up, broadband and mobile services to customers. In the year to December last year, revenues were£280 million and operating profit was£3 million.

Meanwhile, Carphone has agreed to pay Centrica to continue recruiting customers for Onetel through its British Gas operations - a further£22.2 million over the next three years if recruitment targets are met.

Numis analyst Steve Davies said: 'The transactions make excellent strategic sense and will put TalkTalk in a much stronger position to push into line rental and particularly broadband in 2006.'

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