Carphone gets EU green light for Tiscali buy

Carphone Warehouse's £236m purchase of Tiscali UK has been given the go-ahead by the European Commission.

The deal will make TalkTalk, Carphone Warehouse's broadband-provision business, the UK's largest ISP, with around 4.25 million residential customers. On Tuesday, the Commission said the merger "would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it".

"The new entity will continue to face competition from a number of strong players, especially BT, as well as from a number of strong alternative operators, including those based on the cable platform," the Commission said in a statement. "Competition from other technologies, such as mobile telecommunications, is also growing."

Carphone Warehouse announced the acquisition in early May, ending months of speculation over who might buy Tiscali's UK operations. In early June, Carphone Warehouse said it would split its Best Buy Europe retail division and TalkTalk into separate businesses.