Topic: Bulldog Communications

Reports at el Reg claim that Pipex will be closing it's call centres which serve Bulldog customers.

Troubled Pipex bought the ISP from Cable and Wireless last year along with it's chequered past of customer dissatisfaction. While nothing has been announced officially, it's been rumoured that Bulldog's outsourcers have been told their services will no longer be needed in 90 days' time.

Pipex have given the 'no comment' replies but have said "Pipex has no plans to reduce the level of support for customers with a Bulldog service nor has it any plans to change the way that the customer can contact the support teams." which is a nice no committal answer.

Bulldog have given more details of it's security breach as reported a few days ago, but it seems a bit of a PR exercise to reassure customers.

As we noted previously the facts don't seem to stack up, as thieves who have managed to obtain 100,000 credit card details would have more success than just three telemarketing calls.
Bulldog's claim that nobody has suffered any financial loss is also misleading, as it is common for credit card companies would refund any monies taken illegally from the customer.

It has been strangely quiet as to why noting has taken over 18 months for the facts to have been reported.

Pipex owned ISP Bulldog have finally come clean and admitted that 100,000 of it's customers details have been stolen.

It admitted that the customer details were "illegally obtained" by unnamed individuals in 2005 but gave no details why they have taken so long to publish the security breach. The details only came to light after Cable & Wireless, who sold the ISP to Pipex last year, uncovered the theft following an external enquiry

It seems unsolicited phone calls were used to obtain customers bank account and credit card details, but why someone would go thought that trouble and then not use the "credit card details...illegally" seems rather far fetched.

Less than a month ago when Cable & Wireless decided to stop accepting orders for it's residential ISP, Bulldog, but said that it would continue supporting it's current users.

Now  it's decided to 'support' it's customers by trying to find another ISP to flog them off to. It seems that C & W want to make a clean break from the consumer market with no existing 'baggage' to support.

So why didn't they just announce this last month?

As we reported yesterday, Cable & Wireless has announced plans to transform Bulldog into a wholesale only service provider, and says it will stop acquiring new residential and small business retail customers from 1 July.

Thankfully for existing 118,000 Bulldog retail customers it will continue to provide services to them. As a result of the move, Bulldog will reduce its headcount by approximately 150, mainly from the sales and marketing departments.

It's plans for LLU are still unchanged, C&W says that it is on target to fully unbundle 800 exchanges by the end of September and had a total of 411 exchanges unbundled by the end of March.

Rumours are flying around this evening that Cable and Wireless owned Bulldog are set to announce tomorrow (thursday) that they will pull out of the broadband sales market, instead focusing on Wholesale provision only.

As cited from ZDNet, according to insiders at Cable and Wireless, the blame lays firmly at the doorstep of Carphone Warehouse, who have seen massive popularity with its free broadband offer. Word has it that Carphone Warehouse's offer has attracted some 300,000 subscribers to signup, 100,000 more subscribers than what Bulldog have managed to get signed up since their incarnation 2 years ago. Hence it appears that Cable and Wireless are throwing in the towel.

No word of what will happen to existing subscribers, but we should know more about this tomorrow, if indeed this all provides to be correct.

Bulldog, who always seem to be on the receiving end of bad press have decided to fight back.

The internet arm of Telco Cable & Wireless is to launch a £5 million advertising campaign to launch it's 16Mbps broadband service. The campaign, which will last for three months, will feature two TV ads, one DRTV ad and a direct drive using the line 'Broadband as big as your imagination'.

Edit: Bulldog are actually spending £5 million not £5 as we previously reported!!

Bulldog have responded to DSLMax by using it's ADSL 2+ technology to double the speed of its broadband service for both residential and commercial customers.

The service named DoubleSpeed service will give a maximum of 16Mbps, but speeds will vary depending on the length and quality of users lines, however Bulldog is confident that all users will see an improvement.

Residential customers can get DoubleSpeed Anytime Plus for £9.75 for the first month or Unlimited Plus for £19.50 for the first two months. Prices will rise by £5 per month after the initial period.
Business customers will get a 16Mbps downloads and up to 1Mbps upload connection for £45 ex VAT a month and a Bulldog phone line, although the business account is being hit with an £80 activation fee owing to the installation procedure at local exchanges.

Bulldog is currently available to 31 per cent of the UK population with it's equipment in 400 exchanges, it hopes be bring coverage up to 50 per cent by September.

Bulldog has struck a distribution deal with supermarket giant Tesco to put it's CD's inside stores.

The CD's will allow customers to sign up of Bulldogs phone and broadband package, which has made the news for the wrong reasons lately. As Bulldog is a LLU ISP and only has 400 exchanges enabled the CD's will be at a selected 300 stores, those who could actually get the service.

According to Bulldog this will be an  "increasing general awareness that consumers do have a real choice of communications provider".

Bulldog is being taken to court by a businessman who claims that he suffered weeks of disruption which caused him lost income.

The problem started when Phillip Oppenheim who is the manger of a bar and restaurant in London agreed to move to Bulldog in July last year. Following concerns over it's lack of service he had second thoughts and subsequently tried to cancel the installation, which he claims that Bulldog refused to allow, and a week later he was connected.

Once he became a Bulldog customer, he was unable to get an Internet connection, and it took two weeks before he was back on a BT connection, and another two weeks before he was returned to his previous ISP.

After contacting Ofcom, he was told he would be entitled to compensation, but was only offered £45. He hopes to force Bulldog to admit they were wrong not to allow him to cancel the contract before he was connected by getting the court to force Emanuele Angelidis, Bulldog's CEO, and the salesperson who sold him the service to both give evidence in the case

The case will be heard at West London county court on 10 March.