Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Just read that in the paper and thought I would scan it in and then copy it over for people to read. Haven't found anything on the Internet grapevine yet though ;)

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

More info just published on El Reg

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

I believe they are selling the customer base, and not the network/infrastructure.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Well LLU appears to be going well, all the big boys have already sold out :D:tu:

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Is it me, or is then uk residential ISP market showing signs of collapsing?

If it is, in the short term, that will be good for us consumers (lower prices, faster speeds etc). In the longer term, it will be bad (fewer ISPs to chose from, less competition so less incentive to upgrade).

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

It's been showing signs of collapsing since Carphone Warehouse announced their deal.

---------- Post added at 16:08 ---------- Previous post was at 16:08 ----------

That'll be why it's growing several times faster than cable I guess despite a smaller footprint. :rolleyes:

Much as though I hate to throw facts into the mix here check out http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarchive.asp?item=2711 - the fastest growing part of ntl's internet business is its' ADSL, and LLU is adding well over 5000 connections a week at the moment, a growth rate way in excess of either original ntl or ex-Telewest, who between them managed to add 190,000 customers in the whole of last year. It's expected that by the end of the year LLU providers will have added over 500k customers.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

I think the whole ISP market is going through worrying times, atm it could do with being a lot more stable than it is.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Even the isp's you would think were untouchable can even be swallowed up, it would seem.

Pretty soon, it will be like it was 10 years ago (regarding isp's that didn't use the surftime package), not a huge amount of choice. :erm:

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Theres a difference between the newboys and an established player in the market thats been there for over a decade. In relative terms, the cablecos have been offering the same thing for years now, so you can't expect a magic number of signups just out of nowhere.

Besides theres also one thing in having x so many customers sign up, and actually be able to cope, ala Bulldog.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Obviously LLU isn't in as much trouble as you think then if they have so many customers signing up they can't cope.

I don't see the whole 'different thing' as being relevant at all either, rather a feeble excuse.

If these products have been available for years surely the saturation for broadband would affect LLU as well? After all people don't buy 'cable' or 'ADSL' they buy broadband. Most don't care how it is delivered.

If cable operators have been offering the 'same thing for years now' and are unable to grow their markets that is their problem for not innovating enough. ADSL in the UK on LLU operators has gone from 2 to 4 to 8 to 24Mbit sync rate and prices have dropped astronomically. I'd consider cable to be as under threat as LLU, though that's competition, and competition will hopefully be good.

Don't see why you're happy about the idea of LLU being in strife either to be honest, it's LLU and BT Wholesale DSL that's forced ntl to increase speeds and lower prices. If it weren't for those we'd all probably still have our 512 - 600k down and 128k up for £25 or a massive 1Mbit down and 256k up for £50.

You might want to actually try the competition instead of knocking it as it's not too shabby at all. I actually pay full price for my package as my supplier doesn't need to bribe me with discounts to compensate for their crap customer service and get basic TV and unlimited, unshaped 8m/512k (soon 22m/1m) broadband for £27 / month.

Or you could carry on puckering up to cable, though if you're angling for a job with ntl in engineering you're pretty optimistic.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Heres the latest "dear john" :


You may have seen in the national press last weekend coverage of Bulldog’s plan to sell its customer base. The purpose of this letter is to inform you of our intentions and to provide a clearer picture.

Firstly, I can confirm that Cable & Wireless are in discussion with potential purchasers of the Bulldog retail customer base. This move is completely consistent with our announcement on 8th June where we specified that Bulldog was changing its strategy from acquiring new customers in the residential and small business sectors and would, instead, focus on offering a wholesale product to major broadband services providers.

Secondly, until any deal is completed, Bulldog will continue to fully support its customers, retaining all parts of our infrastructure and organisation. This includes functions such as technical support, customer service and billing.

Thirdly, I would like to reassure you that Bulldog is committed to securing a purchaser of the customer base that will continue to provide service to you on our existing network. That way, there will be no disruption or changes to your service. With Bulldog’s state-of-the-art network still providing your service, you’ll certainly be assured of an ongoing, very high standard of delivery.

I shall contact you again when I have more information to share with you. In the meantime we thank you for your continued custom.

Yours sincerely,

John Pluthero
Executive Chairman, UK C&W

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Btw, if you ever think NTL are unreal, try Bulldog, i guarantee you will be even more unhappy. ;)

I always offer more
 

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

I don't really understand this, why are C&W selling the Bulldog customer base, rather than the whole company/brand.

In that letter it says they want bulldog to focus on wholesale. Why not offer wholesale ADSL under the C&W brand with which they provide many other wholesale and large scale business services. Surely that would lead to less confusion for Bulldog customers, many of which I would guess are already rather disillusioned due to poor service.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

The customer base is an asset and worth money to them, the idea for them is to supply other ISPs with a backbone structure, that way they minimise their customer base, maximise profit and stop having to fend off complaints from Joe Public.

Bulldog Communications
 

What a strange set set up!

• They've closed their tele-sales helpline and now only take online orders.
• They've re-introduced the installation charge for a new line.
• They do not send paper bills and you can only pay by credit/debit card or by direct debit.

Do they not want customers or something?

Re: Bulldog Communications
 

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=49426
Nope.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

I don't think Cable and Wireless should do that.

Cable and Wireless/Bulldog should launch deals that will over take TalkTalk's poor service and offer more flexibility to customers.

Cable and Wireless has a history of selling its businesses that are going through a rough patch but doesn't necessarily solves the problem. They sold one of the UK's most successful mobile company ''one2one' back in 1999 which was a stupid thing to do. They also sold their residential business to NTL whilst Cable and Wireless had the opportunity to keep its residential business and also buy Telewest Communications at the same time. Back in the mid-1990's they sold their payphone business which traded as Mercury payphones to IPM Communications(an italian payphone group) and the payphones were fully refurbished and traded as Interphone. Cable and Wireless also got rid of the UK's successful paging company and now trades as Page One.

Bulldog should simply improve its services and offer good deals which will increase its number of customers to 1 million.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Bulldog won't do that and C&W won't do it as it costs money and currently they aren't making much profit from Bulldog. They know that it will cost a lot of money to put right what they have messed up so far and by then they would have lost a lot of customers anyway.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

All they have to do is improve their sales and customer services/technical support and make the service seem reasonable, by manipulating consumers. If they offered free 16Meg broadband for those who choose the Top phone package,Bulldog lounge and calling features pack and also add 6p connection charge for all calls not included in an allowance bundle such as mobile calls. I'm sure they will be able to make some money to pay for the improvements and advertising.

Remember, TalkTalk's free broadband is terrible as it is a 'Free service', there have also been many complaints about Carphone Warehouse services which include:

Fresh Mobile: Carphone warehouse removed caps which were set by parents of children who use a pay monthly phone without any notice and bills came in at £250! Also a case of unfair contract policies too.

TalkTalk: Many complaints about problems with getting online, users are not garunteed a connection at busy periods or if they live far away from the exchange. How useful that is!

Customer Services: Customers have been unable to get through to customer services because lines are constantly engaged and its an 0845 number and they have customers on hold for ages.

Billing: Corrupt billing system where direct debit payments are being debited from wrong accounts!

So Carphone warehouse is not as successful as you might think and another thing, they aren't as big as Cable and Wireless and do not have as much money as Cable and Wireless or any other large telecoms group and could easily be knocked down at anytime especially when customers are experiencing a poor service.

This is also the case for SKY, the free broadband offer does not garuntee a good service. Whatsmore, SKY customers end up shedding out an extra £11.50 for BT line rental where as Telewest/NTL customers have it inclusive of the TV package.

Telewest's essential package is £21.50 with a telephone line, the equivalent package on SKY costs the same but not with a telephone line and instead customers pay out an extra £11.50 totalling £33. Then the so called free internet kicks in. The same package costs the same on NTL-Telewest and is commonly known as the '3 for £30' offer, however it costs £30 when you pay by direct debit.

So really, if you compare all the packages and call charges, they all roughly work out the same!

The most expensive option was Orange. Customers using the free orange internet offer when they spend £30 or more on pay monthly mobile services will spend at £20 more than what a NTL-Telewest customer would pay.

So when customers work this out, Bulldog,NTL,Telewest and AOL will be the companies left standing to take the custom, so it might not be worth Cable and Wireless selling up just yet! I think they should leave it for a year or two as I can a big disaster happening at Carphone Warehouse and BT's service is just extortionate for what you get!

AOL is also thinking of selling its UK customer base.

So I don't think any companies will be interested in taking over Bulldog anyway.

A sneaky way of Bulldog getting out of the bad part is for them to do a total rebrand which is not going to cost to much money. A simple and cost effective way is for them to rebrand into 'Cable and Wireless Residential' or even dig out old names and brands such as Mercury. Then they could buy out AOL UK,then they could launch a virtual mobile network service raking in the cash, once they make money, they could offer ADSL TV services similar to homechoice and Cable and Wireless would be offering a quad service!

They could even purchase Homechoice as I believe thats up for sale and don't think a merge will happen with Tiscali since they have experienced financial problems for years!

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

The problem is that Bulldog suddenly became massively successful, and the systems they had in place couldn't cope. They spent a couple of years trying to improve, but in the meantime, companies like Talk Talk came along and introduced incredibly cheap or free broadband. Wholesale and equipment prices haven't fallen as quickly as the price to the end consumer, so we end up with a situation that all Residential ISPs are making little or no profit.
Sadly, the Great British Public does not bother reading further than the word "Free". They do not bother to work things out.
AFAIK, Bulldog isn't for sale. The reason C&W have effectively pulled out of residential broadband (and the reason they pulled out of it before) is that it is not very profitable. It is far more profitable for them to sell their LLU lines wholesale to other ISPs (which is what they are doing), who can than take the loss thanks to tons of Venture capital.

Make no mistake, the market is collapsing, and I suspect you'll see a lot more residential ISPs pulling out of the market or closing before the market is restored to health again.
A rebrand won't cure their customer services problems. They need serious investment to do that.


One thing you forgot to mention. About 24months or so ago, Cable and Wireless were in massive financial trouble. They have only survived thanks to a massive cost-cutting exercise ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/02/cable_results/ ). It is likely they are still trying to keep costs down, so there will be little investment in services like Bulldog (which, as I said above, needs to spend an awful lot of money to improve it's customer services, whatever brand they use).

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

No they don't.

ntl have always hidden the fact that the price they quote for DTV is not quite the real price as hidden away down the bottom is the small print is the fact that you always had to take a phone line & that was an additional cost.

I don't think there is actually difference between the Sky & ntl TV packages cost-wise.

Re: Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner
 

Thats interesting.

NTL thinks that if they rebrand into Virgin, it will improve everything. But clearly its not and understand what you are saying. Rebranding to Virgin is not going upgrade 30% of NTL's cable network by 2008!

NTL has two large franchises once owned by BT and it is in tatters, NTL cannot afford to upgrade these two franchises which are located in Westminster and Milton Keynes, they don't even have a telephone network and customers have to use a BT line! Whats more, there are parts of other NTL franchises and streets which are still not digital and they were aiming to get the whole network upgraded by 2008, 2009 at the latest. Telewest said that it would upgrade its network to digital by 2006, and so they have. However, they also said that they would turn off analogue services by 2006, there are still loads of customers using analogue services, this shows that NTL cannot afford to upgrade its network to digital and means it could be heading for more financial trouble.

And another thing, how comes Cable and Wireless is not regulated by Ofcom as much as BT, BT and Cable and Wireless were both nationalised companies before Margaret Thatcher came on the scene. In fact C&W launched in the 1850's and was a private company until the second world war and was re-nationalised until 1982 and it was privatised again. BT was formed by the goverment sometime around when Cable and Wireless was nationalised and was taken over by the goverment's post office and was then known as 'GPO or post office telephones/telegraphs' until 1982 when it de-merged away from the post office and then privatised in 1984.