| Tessellis S.p.A. | |
| Former Name: | Tiscali S.p.A. (1998-2023) |
| Type: | Public S.p.A. |
| Founder: | Renato Soru |
| Location: | Tiscali Campus |
| Hq Location City: | Sa Illetta, Cagliari |
| Hq Location Country: | Italy |
| Area Served: | Italy |
| Key People: | Renato Soru (Founder and CEO) |
| Isin: | IT0005496473 |
| Industry: | Telecommunications |
Tessellis S.p.A. (formerly Tiscali S.p.A.) is an Italian telecommunications company founded in 1998 and based in Cagliari, Sardinia, that provides Internet and telecommunications services in Italy, and, previously had operations in other European nations through its acquisition of many smaller European Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the late 1990s.[1]
Tiscali S.p.A. was created in January 1998 in Cagliari by Renato Soru, following the deregulation of Italian telephone system.[2] The company owes its name to a Sardinian mountain at which remains of an ancient village were found.
In 1999 the subsidiary Tiscali Italia S.p.A. was founded.
From March 1999 onward, Tiscali offered "Tiscali Free Net", a subscription-free Internet service where customers only had to pay for the time they were online. This pushed other Italian providers to repeal their fixed subscription fees, thus contributing to making the Internet accessible to the masses in Italy.
In November 1999 Tiscali, Franco Bernabè and Sanpaolo IMI founded Andala, which in 2000 was acquired by Hutchison Whampoa and won the tender for the award of 3G (UMTS) licenses.[3]
On 25 March 2009 Tiscali launches Tiscali Mobile, an ESP MVNO on the TIM network.
In 2012 three subsidiaries were founded:
On 30 December 2021, Tiscali S.p.A. and Linkem S.p.A. approved the project for the merger by incorporation of Linkem Retail S.r.l. in Tiscali S.p.A.
On 27 April 2022, the shareholders' meetings of Tiscali and Linkem approved the merger between the two companies.
On 1 August 2022, the two companies completed the merger process: Tiscali S.p.A. integrated Linkem Retail S.r.l., with the consequent transfer of the branch to the subsidiary Tiscali Italia S.p.A., while Linkem S.p.A. (now OpNet S.p.A.) became the majority shareholder of Tiscali S.p.A. (58.60%).[4] [5]
After announcing it in October 2022, on 19 January 2023 the name of the parent company became Tessellis S.p.A., which will continue to operate under both the commercial brands Tiscali and Linkem.[6]
In October 1999 (during the dot-com bubble), the company went through an initial public offering (IPO) to be traded on the Italian Stock Exchange at a share price of 46 Euros. 3,098,000 shares were offered to investors of which 2,658,000 shares were created through a capital increase and the rest were sold by Soru. Soru made 20,240,000 Euros on the IPO. In 2012, the price per share had plummeted to 0.04 Euros.
Between 2001 and 2005,[7] shares were also traded on the French Stock Exchange. It was delisted from Paris Stock Exchange at the end of December 2005.
Beginning in 2004, Tiscali sold off many of its regional sub-companies to native telecommunications operators in order to focus more on prime target areas.
Each of Tiscali's regional companies offer many services, which may include broadband Internet access and telephone services. Between 2007 and 2008, Tiscali briefly operated an IPTV service in Italy (available in the cities of Bologna, Cagliari, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Turin and Trieste). Its UK television service, Tiscali TV was acquired by TalkTalk in 2009.
Tiscali's former carrier company, Tiscali International Network, was a pure-play carrier business delivering wholesale services including Global IP Connectivity, MPLS lines, Voice over IP and Network Monitoring. In May 2009, its IP/MPLS backbone counted 90 Points of Presence and extended over 17 European countries and across the United States and Hong Kong. Its Autonomous System (AS3257) was a core ASN in the global Internet routing table, as well as the largest IPv6 backbone outside Asia. The network was sold to the Italian private equity firm BS Private Equity SpA on 27 May 2009, and renamed Tinet.[18]
Tiscali ran similar Web portals for each of its countries, which include features such as Webmail, reviews, news, videos, dating, chat, radio, TV guide, streaming TV channels and others.
Tiscali published a self-branded Web browser of the same name which was distributed with its dial-up Internet packages. The browser used the core of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to display web pages. Distribution of the software ended during Tiscali's corporate rebranding in 2004.
Tiscali offered dial-up Internet access in Finland under service name Surfeu.
Tiscali Campus in Cagliari had 1,000 employees as of early 2013. The center includes a development division for Internet technologies. Researchers working there included Antonio Tuzzi (one of the developers of Apple's macOS), Luca Manunza (inventor of the first Webmail service), and Domenico Dato (developer of Arianna, the first Italian search engine).[19]
On 31 December 2020 it had 530 direct employees, and 5,199,124,915 common shares.Customers include about 673,000 households and companies.[20] In 2021 shareholders of Tiscali included Renato Soru (6,08%) and Amsicora S.r.l. (16.65%).[21]