AN AUSTRALIAN bank has emerged as a possible rival to venture capitalists for Hampshire cable company NTL's television masts arm.

Australia's Macquarie Bank's listed TV arm Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group has been hunting further acquisitions since buying its seed business, the TV towers group Broadcast Australia, from NTL two years ago.

NTL Broadcast, which broadcasts ITV and is up for sale at around £1.2 billion, is seen as a ripe opportunity, especially after one likely buyer, National Grid Transco, ruled itself out of the race, having spent £1.1 billion recently buying 3,500 UK antennae from the American firm Crown Castle.

Meanwhile, there are red faces at Hook based NTL, where an inquiry is under way after callers to its phone complaints line were greeted with a string of expletives.

NTL, which employs thousands of people at three sites in Hampshire, was this month named among the UK's worst firms for customer service and has admitted that a recorded message was tampered with to include a torrent of abuse.

Shocked callers to a faults line were abused by a man with a thick Geordie accent who also lambasted the company's customer service failings.

The rant, which prompted one customer to suggest NTL stood for "Nothing but Terrible Language", stayed active for an hour until staff were alerted by customers.

A spokesman said: "Thankfully, it didn't affect the front end of the system, only those callers who rang to report a fault.

"Obviously we would like to apologise to those customers who heard the rant, but we do not yet know how many people that is."

Earlier this month, NTL came second bottom in a report on handling complaints compiled by the Institute of Customer Service.