According to a statement from Tiscali, the Italian based ISP is in an internal consultation process with employees regarding its plans to use its call centres in North Africa and India to provide customer support for the broadband & voice division of Pipex which it has acquired a couple months of ago in an £210m  deal. The deal is supposed to have made the triple play provider in UK to indulge in cost-cutting measures and the recent announcement from Tiscali stands proof for it.

"Following the acquisition of The Pipex broadband and voice division in September, alignment of our key operations is important to ensure we maximise the opportunity for the Tiscali UK Group moving forward.
Where we can make decisions we are moving forward quickly, but we are in an internal consultation process with employees and will not discuss specific plans or sites outside of that."

Accordingly, by the last quarter of next year, Pipex's customers will no longer get customer support from the existing call centres of Pipex as three of them will be shut by September next year. The major call centres of Pipex – The Minton, Manchester and Welwyn Garden City will be closed during six months period between January and September of next year. Tiscali’s plan to close Pipex call centres will lead to joblessness of those who work in these call centres and the number is estimated to be around 650 as per the report from Pipex. However, Tiscali will continue to use the customer support centres of Pipex at Stoke Mandeville and at Sligo in Ireland.

Tiscali's announcement will nevertheless surprise many Pipex's customers who are comprised of home users and small businesses. Anyone who reads Tiscali's statement will understand the ISP’s intention to provide customer service in a cost-effective manner which will benefit the company but how the customers are going to benefit is yet to be seen. 

The non-UK based call centres were always looked with contempt by a major section of UK broadband population although many UK broadband providers have been practicing it for a quite long time for reasons definitely not related to customer satisfaction. Many customers voiced their concern over the quality of support provided by call centres outside of UK as most of the staff working here are not able to deliver the best customer service due to poor language skills and lack of expertise in UK broadband