Talks between British Sky Broadcasting and Tiscali, the Italian telecommunications company, have come to at least a temporary halt because the two companies are far apart on the valuation of the latter’s UK division.

When it became known earlier in the year that Tiscali wanted to sell assets including the 1.84m-customer UK broadband service, the price range mentioned by people familiar with the company went as high as £600m, although analysts indicated that a range of £425m to £510m was more realistic.