The Carphone Warehouse has made a successful bid to take over AOL UK, the country’s third-largest ISP.

The BBC reports that the company paid somewhere in the region of £370 million for AOL UK, which was being flogged at auction by US corporation Time Warner.

The Carphone Warehouse had rolled out its “free” TalkTalk broadband offer earlier this year and was having trouble keeping up with the demand for its service.

It has said that it will keep the AOL name, and will charge a subscription for the service. AOL will manage advertising for both AOL UK and TalkTalk.

“The joint development of AOL’s already successful audience platform will bring us new advertising and content revenues in a proven and low-risk manner”, said Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone to the BBC.

AOL UK’s customers number about 2.1 million, of which 1.5 million subscribe to broadband service. NTL has almost a million more customers, while BT is running only just ahead of AOL with 2.2 million subscribers.

Via BBC

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