CARPHONE Warehouse began trading in 1989. Back then, it was a single store in Marylebone Road in London.

Charles Dunstone, the founder, set it up with just £6,000 in savings. He worked from the building’s basement and did not draw a salary for a year.

In the ensuing years, as demand for mobile phones boomed, the company experienced rapid organic growth.

By 1996 the frenzy enabled it to open its first stores outside the UK, in Paris and Dublin, under the Phone House brand. A year later it moved into Madrid.

In 1998 the company made its first acquisitions, buying GEAB Teleshop, a leading independent mobile phone retailer in Sweden, and Comprotoel Groep, a Dutch mobile phone wholesale and retail business.

It was not until 1999 that the size of the British operation was transformed with the acquisition of the UK business of Tandy, the general electrical goods and mobile phone retailer.

This gave Carphone access to Tandy’s 268 stores spread across the UK’s high streets.

In the same year Carphone launched its own mobile network, Value Telecom.

The company floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000.

Since then, the Carphone busily has expanded into new areas of the telecoms arena, snapping up Cellcom, a billing provider, and Opal Telecom, a business telecom service, and launching TalkTalk, its own residential fixed-line service, which it has pitched as a direct competitor to BT.

The company has also struck a deal with Sainsbury, the supermarket group, to provide mobile and fixed-line services to its customers.

Last year Carphone made its first move into the fixed-line market on the Continent with the acquisition of Xtra in Spain and then of NTel in Switzerland, allowing it to start introducing TalkTalk across Europe.

The group’s latest services include one offering low-cost international mobile calls aimed at students and foreigners living in the UK.

The chairman of Carphone Warehouse is Hans Snook, the founding chief executive of Orange, the mobile phone provider.

Non-executive directors include Sir Brian Pitman, former chairman of Lloyds TSB, and John Gildersleeve, former commercial director of Tesco.

Times Recommends

• C&G axed - 1,660 jobs to be lost
• UK house prices rise 1.1% as buyers return
• Mixed reaction to US banks repaying bailouts