Tiscali – they’re good though I don’t know how to pronounce them! (Tiscali (Lineone))

Member Name: libertybell

Product:	Tiscali (Lineone)
Date:	28/07/01 (869 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big ISP with lots of resources, impressive so far

Disadvantages: Not sure how to pronounce their name

Back in May 2000, Kingfisher through its Comet stores bought us a too good to be true deal. For £20 per annum you received unlimited off-peak Internet access. An extra £35 bought you unlimited 24x7 access. This was in the halcyon days when these ISP’s thought they would make their money on loads of advertising revenue. They didn’t consider that this revenue might not be forthcoming plus there might be some (misguided/sad) users who wanted to spend upwards of 24 hours a day on the net.

Well Libertysurf lost money and were snapped up in January 2001 by Tiscali. Tiscali honoured our 12 (well 13 because we got a free month) month contracts and in early July announced that Libertysurf was no more.

Wanting to continue to surf the net and of course read/write Dooyoo opinions, I looked at the alternatives and eventually settled on Tiscali. For £14.95 per month, I get unlimited 24x7 Internet access with no cut-off (twas 2 hours with Libertysurf), 25mb of web space and no adverts.

So who are Tiscali? They are not exactly a household name like Freeserve or AOL. A quick look at the web site gives a few clues. They are a European ISP and claim to be the biggest in Europe with 16 million users. Apart from the purchase of Libertysurf, their other major coup was the acquisition of WorldOnline (a Dutch ISP) back in October 2000. They were voted number 1 UK ISP by the Internet magazine back in February 2001.

Setting up an account with them was pretty straightforward. I filled in my details online (including credit card numbers!) and was accepted in about 20 minutes. My account was activated in about 24 hours and I was provided with a 1690….. freefone number. The only 2 activities I had to undertake was the removal of my Libertysurf access and the setting up of the dial-up connection into Tiscali. I was provided with a full set of step-by-step screen pictures. I followed them to the letter and ‘hey presto’ I was online.
No messing around with disks.

Connection time is much faster than Libertysurf and there is none of this dreadful 2-hour cut-off, which you get with the ‘low cost’ ISP’s. The Tiscali portal is functional – but nothing special.

The one dilemma I have is how you pronounce Tiscali. It thought it was TIS_CAR_LEE assuming the ISP was of say Italian origin. Then when watching British Eurosport, I saw an advert which referred to them as TIS_CAL_EE. So I’m confused. They sponsor a team in the Tour de France and you will find their name on the side of the BAR cars in Formula 1.

I’ve been pleased with my new ISP and will update this opinion with any further experiences.

Their web site is: www.tiscali.co.uk

Summary: