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By Graeme Wearden, 26 July 2005 09:15

NEWS An ongoing row over customer service complaints at Bulldog took a twist on Friday, when parent company Cable & Wireless blamed BT for some of the problems.

Earlier this month, hordes of Bulldog customers experienced serious problems with their broadband and telephony services. Many also found it extremely difficult to contact Bulldog customer support for assistance.

Speaking at C&W's annual general meeting on Friday, chairman Richard Lapthorne said BT had been struggling to hand over control of telephone lines to Bulldog - through a process known as local-loop unbundling (LLU).

"In broadband, over the last few weeks, Bulldog has begun to improve customer provisioning," he said. Lapthorne added that his company was encouraged by the comments and feedback from customers who signed up for its 8Mbps broadband and telephone service.

"However, in the area of provisioning in particular, the level of service remains inconsistent as we work with BT - after their relatively recent introduction of automated procedures [for LLU] - to enhance the quality and accuracy with which telephone lines are transferred to the Bulldog network," Lapthorne added.

LLU allows an operator such as Bulldog to take control of a customer's telephone line and offer their own range of services, rather than just reselling BT's range of wholesale products. LLU has been fraught with problems in recent years, with some companies accusing BT of deliberately making the process expensive and difficult, to avoid losing control of its network.

According to The Guardian, fewer than 60 per cent of the lines that Bulldog has tried to unbundle have been supplied correctly and on time by BT - because of the provisioning problems described by Lapthorne - and one in three didn't work.

This could go some way to explaining some of the problems suffered by Bulldog customers - but BT has firmly rejected the claim.

A BT spokeswoman said: "Across the industry, we have been delivering an average of 91 per cent of unbundled lines correctly and on time. Far from a third of lines having faults, our figures are an average of six per cent or fewer."

Back in February, Peter Black, Ofcom's Telecoms Adjudicator, reported that just 50 to 60 per cent of newly unbundled lines were actually delivered 'right first time', against a target of 75 per cent.

Bulldog's customer service problems have no connections with BT, however, but have attracted many complaints - such as this one from Geoff Henshall, managing director of MK Dor-2-Dor: "I got so frustated that I called the sales line and enquired as to why they had plenty of staff to deal with new customers but none for existing ones - the young lady was quite abrupt and in a rather sarcastic voice said, 'Well we still have to make money, don't we.' She then cut me off."

On Friday, Lapthorne promised that this would improve.

"We have recruited and trained further customer support staff, in line with our plans, and introduced automated tracking systems to reduce call volumes. We expect to see material improvements over the summer."

Graeme Wearden writes for ZDNet UK