Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by Mail On Sunday Financials

Bulldog on the market
By Simon Fluendy
TROUBLED telecoms giant Cable & Wireless has put its Bulldog broadband service up for sale for as much as £50 million.
Investment bank NM Rothschild last week requested expressions of interest from Industry and private equity players.
C&W issued a denial after Financial Mail reported in February that it was poised to exit the high-speed Internet business. But it has been an open secret in the Industry for months that new boss John Pluthero thought the company needed to shed Bulldog. C&W bought it for £18 million in 2004 and has spent £173 million upgrading systems. It attracted about 150,000 customers but served them so badly that last year communications watchdog Ofcom launched an Investigation. Pluthero wants shot of the
consumer business, but will keep the infrastructure,âââ₠¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ said one senior industry source
†˜He will tie the purchase of the customer base to use of C&Wââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢S access system. This will make the price look flattering to C&W, but enable the buyer to have cheap access to the local broadband networkââ‚à ‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢

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

[Paul K]

More info just published on El Reg

Cable & Wireless is to sell its residential broadband business Bulldog.

The telco provider announced less than a month ago that it was pulling out of residential broadband, but promised continuing support for existing customers.

At the time, the firm said it would concentrate on selling wholesale broadband services to other providers.

Bulldog sent us the following statement:

Broadband providers with small market share are starting to struggle. As ever bigger brands coming to market with bundled offers, it's getting harder to make a crust. Bulldog has some 120,000 customers.

The news comes with the arrival of a host of bundled services, or so-called "free broadband" offers, from Carphone Warehouse, Orange, and O2. Sky has said it will launch broadband services this summer. AOL is also rumoured to be selling its European access business.

So, it could be a mobile company that picks up Bulldog - O2 and Vodafone have been mentioned in the past, but O2 paid £50m for Be in June. ®

[Neil]

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

[jtwn]

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

[Stuart]

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).

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

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).

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

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

Originally Posted by jtwn

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

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

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.

[Rone]

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

[pedantic]

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.

[jtwn]

Originally Posted by James Henry

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.

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.

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.

[James Henry]

Originally Posted by jtwn

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.

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.

[Rone]

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

[Rone]

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

[Angela22]

ADMIN EDIT (Chris T): Bye bye, spammer

[Robster]

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.

[Paul K]

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.