A stint as an Avon lady provided Mary Turner with the perfect grooming for her role as a key player in Britain’s home communications industry. The brutal business of selling internet access in competition with giants such as Virgin Media and Sky, she says, has nothing on trying to flog lipsticks and mascaras to reluctant South Londoners.

“My area was Croydon. And I had to go after dark, when people were coming home from work. It was, er, quite challenging,” she says.

The resilience and thick skin that the petite, polished mother-of-one acquired then has been needed aplenty since 2001, when she joined Tiscali, the Italian-headquartered broadband and pay-television operator, to head its UK operations. For years analysts and others have been writing off the business as a no-hoper, lacking the deep pockets of its rivals on the high street. Would-be buyers have been greedily circling the UK operations.

Their scepticism is not without foundation: struggles to finance its operations forced Tiscali, once one of Europe’s biggest internet providers, to reduce its 15 markets to only two - Italy and the UK, which now constitutes 70 per cent of the business.

Moreover, Britain, always fiercely competitive, is growing even more cutthroat. Last year Carphone Warehouse upped the ante by offering “free” broadband to customers who signed up to a £20.99-a-month calls package - an idea that was swiftly emulated by several rivals.

Tiscali UK, far from giving up, has dug in its heels. The group, already Britain’s fourth-biggest broadband provider with an 11 per cent market share, is aiming to become a leading provider of television over the internet with its Tiscali TV brand. It is about to announce a package of broadband, home phone, television and line rental for £19.99 a month and plans to make its television service available to ten million households by the end of the year.

Television on offer includes “catchup” services from the BBC and Channel 4 as well, as content including Sky Sports and on-demand episodes of series and films.

Ms Turner’s task is to propel the business into becoming a leading “triple-play provider” of fixed-line telephone, broadband and television services, and to groom it for a hoped-for flotation within the next two years – not easy, not least because of the number of City doubters. Nevertheless, her business brain, eloquence and vitality, aside from being a refreshing change within a predominantly “stale male” industry, are strong selling points. So, too, are her years of hard graft in the retail and technology sector.

Ms Turner, born in Malaysia, gained a taste for business helping on her father’s tea plantation, overseeing the clocking-in of workers. After gaining an MBA she joined Elizabeth Arden and then Avon as a director-designate. The company’s strategy included making all would-be directors take on junior roles - including that of door-to-door sales representative. Her C.V. also includes a stint as chief buyer for the 1980s cult catalogue Innovations. The post involved scouring the world for gadgets and gizmos.

Her career in the telecoms and broadband sector began in earnest at Compuserve. From there she joined BT’s joint venture with United News, BT Line One, later sold to Tiscali. If Virgin Media has Sir Richard Branson and BSkyB has James Murdoch, Tiscali can lay claim to its own big-name tycoon. As part of its strategy, last summer it merged with HomeChoice, the TV-over-internet service, and consequently acquired Chris Larson, the former Microsoft executive, as an 11.5 per cent shareholder. The merger looked onerous: HomeChoice’s high ambitions of creating a television revolution with its on-demand service delivered over broadband had failed catastrophically.

Only ten months before, its parent had said that the business, in which £350 million had been invested over seven years, would run out of money unless it could secure further funding. Critics of Tiscali sniggered at the tie-up as a case of “two drunks propping each other up”.

But timing, according to Ms Turner, is everything. “When HomeChoice was launched, the speed of broadband needed for such a service was not there and it did not have the customer footprint. We have given it the footprint.” Today, Tiscali’s broadband is accessible to almost all of the British population.

If Ms Turner’s route into the industry was an unconventional one, so is her presence at the top of a sector whose leaders remain predominantly male. The gender imbalance, she insists, is not something that affects her. More noticeable, she says is the tendency of some of her counterparts to take it all “rather too seriously”.

What to watch out for

The “triple-play” offers

Sky £16 a month and £10.50 line rental 2MB broadband, two television “mixes”, free weekend and evening landline calls

Virgin Media £30 a month 2MB broadband, free weekend calls, TV package including catchup television and inclusive line rental

Tiscali £19.99 a month 2MB broadband, TV including catchup television and some video-on-demand, free weekend landline calls and inclusive line rental

Source: Sky, Virgin Media, Tiscali

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