SPILL, Aisle 2, Thursday (NNN) — Supermarket giant Tesco plans to establish itself as a major force in the broadband Internet market with Tesco Value Internet, setting itself up as a rival to to BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk.

“It’ll be hard work,” said Tesco Telecoms head Lance Batchelor, “but we have the customer service and engineering excellence ready to equal the market frontrunners. For ten quid a month, you can have internet and phone that cut out at random, customer service from a call centre in Uzbekistan — second-line support will actually have an English vocabulary of over twenty phrases, learnt phonetically! — and random viruses being uploaded to your computer. Even if it’s a Mac.”

The company will sell customers a “cheap and cheerful” modem, in white with red and blue accents, hard-wired to their account. Connection speed will be 16 megabits, with a bandwidth cap of 32 megabits. The basic plan will include “full access to all Internet sites,” particularly those that pay Tesco for access. Web search with Microsoft Bing! is free, web search that finds things will be an extra five pounds. The Sainsbury’s shopping site is anticipated to remain inexplicably nonfunctional at all times on all plans.

Not to be outdone, Asda and LiDL have announced their own broadband offerings. The Asda Smart Price Modem will have flashing white and green lights with electric bits placed inside at random. The LiDL modem will, quite literally, be a block of German-made cheese with wires in.

Waitrose sneered at their competitors’ plans, unveiling their own £40/month offering that connects using a superior piece of tank-like stainless steel design that finds your favoured MP3s and porn for you and pre-sorts them for your convenience.