NEWS Cable & Wireless opened up a new assault on BT on Friday by purchasing Bulldog Communications for £18.6m.
This acquisition will give the telco a foothold in the UK local-loop unbundling (LLU) market, letting it create and sell businesses broadband packages that are different and potentially more innovative than those sold by BT Wholesale.
Bulldog is one of the few companies attempting to compete with BT by installing its own equipment in its telephone exchanges. So far it has unbundled 38 exchanges, principally in London.
Cable & Wireless now plans to raise this number to 200, which should give many thousands of businesses more choice when selecting a high-speed internet connection.
The telco isn't yet revealing which exchanges it will unbundle or what products it will offer but says the deal will give it valuable experience.
"The purchase will enable us to develop our own broadband services, rather than just including products from BT Wholesale as part of our portfolio," explained Peter Eustace, head of media relations at Cable & Wireless.
LLU has largely been a disaster. It was meant to give rival telecoms operators a chance to compete fairly with the incumbent but in most European countries relatively few lines have been unbundled.
The UK's regulators finally lost patience with the process earlier this month, when Ofcom demanded that BT cut the cost of unbundling. BT actually pre-empted some of Ofcom's actions by announcing significant price cuts on the same day.
Eustace denied that the purchase of Bulldog is a direct response to Ofcom's tougher line on LLU, insisting that Cable & Wireless had been considering a move into LLU before this happened.
Jan Dawson, senior manager at Ovum, believes that the takeover is a smart move for Cable & Wireless because it gets its hands on four years of unbundling experience.
"Most likely, Cable & Wireless will use this advantage to secure wholesale contracts with the larger ISPs looking to migrate their customers from bitstream to LLU services, although we may also see C&W providing retail DSL services to businesses over unbundled loops. All of which should help to fill up what is still the UK's second-biggest fixed-line network," Dawson said.
Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet UK.
Comments
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1. anonymous
I've heard good feedback re: Bulldog services. I signed up for connection in the Aylesbury area early in May, and the line check came back as "Congratulations! your exchange is broadband enabled..", however as soon as the connection fee had left my account, I received an email saying "Unfortunately we are experiencing a brief delay in upgrading the network capacity...." and "We anticipate that the upgrade will be completed in a
couple of weeks..."
It's now 1st June and the works haven't been done and I've only today received a response(after having emaled my concerns) which says "At this time we do not have a completion date for this upgrade." This is all very unfortunate, as I say I've been told good things about Bulldog and look forward to using their service, however I'm only applying for a 512kb line and the excuse that their upgrading to accomadate a 2mb line doesn't impress me at all. It just seems to me that their waiting for enough people to apply before the upgrade becomes cost effective, if that's the case then just tell people, instead of giving them false hopes with availability checker, and banking their cash.
2. anonymous
I'm with BulldogDSL at home and have found their Primetime1000 service very good.
There's been one or two DNS 'hiccups' on occasion, but lragely their service I find to be very reliable. Certainly better than NTLs.
3. anonymous
Bulldog supplied their Prime1000 service to me, I am in London, early than they for a advised. It was easy for a non technical person to install.
I have had no problems since the service was implememented in March 04
4. Eric Deshayes
Bulldog is the first DSL provider I have subscribed to in UK.
But, I am very disappointed:
- I get disconnected every 2 minutes on the week-end and on some evenings
- I can't reach the customer service (always 20 people in front of me in the queue)
- they never EVER answer to any mail I have sent them
- I warned them of a quick phone line disconntect/reconnect a few weeks ago and I ahve just been told that my contract will end next week. Moreover, they want to charge me 51 pounds because I leave before the end of my 3-month contract. I have already paid 50 pounds for having a 3 month minimum contract and I have already paid twice 19.99 pounds... I've called the billing service and they redirect me to the customer service, where I had to wait for 28 people...
5. Alan Goss
I need to source 300+ broadband conns - reliable, cost-efficient for varied-task London Council homeworkers. Should I use Bulldog, BT, a Cable Operator, an Integrator (there's nothing to integrate, is there?? So why use an integrator?) or cast around the other 112 potential suppliers the web sites can offer me?
What best criteria to separate good from bad?