Carriers lining up to buy AOL unit

Mobile phone companies, including Vodafone and O2, are likely to be frontrunners in the race to buy the UK arm of AOL, which was put up for sale last week, a report from the UK paper The Mail said.

The Mail report said industry experts believed AOL, Britain 's third-biggest ISP with 2.2 million customers, could fetch 600 million pounds ($1.1 billion) or more in a sale that would trigger a major round of consolidation in the broadband industry.

"There is a very aggressive price war happening. Not all of the names around today will be around in a year or two," Richard Ireland, partner and head of accountancy at Ernst & Young, was quoted as saying.