Carphone and Best Buy: It Aint About Retail Really

From the day the news broke, the great weight of coverage about Best Buy buying into Carphone Warehouse has been about how Best Buy will attempt an assault on DSG and Comet. That may be the case (especially with weekend rumours about Best Buy hinting it may snap up Currys or Comet), but the actual story here is how the deal makes Carphone Warehouse even more of communications service provider.

In retail it shares the load with a bigger partner, but in broadband services its strategy is one of buying up the big ISP names one by one.

Evidence for this? Today's news about Carphone Warehouse's bid for Tiscali. So how's Dunstone going to spend the remaining £550m of the Best Buy investment of £1.1bn?