It pays to TalkTalk as profits grow

The business – the UK's second biggest broadband firm with 4.2 million customers – bought Tiscali's UK business last year and made its stock market debut in March after a split from Carphone Warehouse.

In its first update since the demerger, TalkTalk added a net 42,000 new broadband customers in the three months to March 31 – up from 36,000 in the previous quarter.

A full set of results will be published in July but indicative figures showed underlying earnings were up 27 per cent to 230m for the year to March 31.

Charles Dunstone, who set up Carphone Warehouse in 1989, retains a 33 per cent stake in both TalkTalk and Carphone and is chairman of both companies.

He said TalkTalk had "performed well" throughout the year with the two priorities being "maintaining the momentum" and pressing on with the integration of Tiscali – set to generate cost savings of up to 50m.

Carphone Warehouse is also prospering as a separate company after raising profits guidance for the third time in six months two weeks ago.

n The mobile phone giant formed by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile's UK operations said the new business will be called Everything Everywhere.

Although the Orange and T-Mobile brands will remain on the high street, the firm said its new name reflected the ambition of the new business, which has 30 million customers.

Chief executive Tom Alexander said the group wanted to give its customers "instant access to everything, everywhere".

Everything Everywhere will have 16,500 staff and be the biggest

operator on the high street with more than 700 staff.

Orange, owned by France Telecom, and Deutsche Telecom's T-Mobile were the third and fourth biggest mobile phone operators in the UK before the merger.