19 December 2005
Carphone Warehouse today purchased household phone company One.Tel from energy supplier Centrica for an estimated £154 million.
It is also to pay about £8.5 million for Swedish firm Tele2's fixed line network in Ireland and the UK.
The moves will see Carphone's TalkTalk service expand to cover a total of ten per cent of the UK market, making the company the closest competitor to BT by some way.
In a press release today Carphone Warehouse said: "Our goal is to become the number one alternative residential telecoms provider in the UK market."
Centrica announced that money from the sale is to be invested in British and overseas energy markets.
"We have made clear for some time that global energy markets are changing rapidly and we want to focus closely on growing our core energy and related operations," said Centrica chief executive Sir Roy Gardner.
"We will continue offering telecoms services to our British Gas customers, but we don't need to own One.Tel to do this," he added.
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