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.

Bulldog are claiming that it is providing a better service than it's rivals to being ADSL2+ broadband to the UK.

The Cable & Wireless owned company announced on Wednesday that it is extending its ADSL2+ trials to Manchester and Liverpool, following earlier work in London. It also slammed rival Be* for bringing it's own ADSL 2+ product out too quickly.

Although this maybe a case of sour grapes as Bulldog may have been caught napping and have just realised it needs to get it's skates on, although it is still far ahead of BT who are still testing their ADSL2+ offering.

Cable & Wireless owned Bulldog Broadband have announced plans yesterday to expand their ADSL2+ trial nationwide, with the aim of offering a commercial service before April 2006.

Following small scale trials in 2005, the ISP hopes to evaluate that an ADSL2+ trial can be both stable and the performance as expected by its subscribers. The news comes as parent company C&W value by investors plunged by some £300m through warnings of flat profits, in addition to some 450 job losses in the UK.

Last week, rival ADSL2+ ISP, "Be" announced their own 24Mbps service will soon be going nationwide.

Bulldog has taken inspiration from the dark days of dial up with its latest broadband offering - pay-as-you-go broadband.

Under the ISPs 'Start@ctive' branding, the package will give consumers 8Mbps downstream access for 3p per minute with no line rental. One major warning here is that 24hours continuour connection would cost users over £43. Keep the connection up for a whole month, and that 3p per minute 'low cost' broadband option, could cost you in excess of a staggering £1300.

Worrying, we found no confirmation of a a capped monthly price, nor any evidence that Bulldog have implemented any form of idle timeout.

On a more positive note, connection costs just a pound (if taking out a new phone line with Bulldog), and users can also get hold of a free USB modem.

While BT has trialled a per-minute scheme and smaller ISPs have launched similar price plans, Bulldog is the first major UK ISP to launch such a product.

The move comes in the wake of customer service woes, leading to an Ofcom investigation and major marketing push for the ISP following the belief that complaints about Bulldog are now "comparable" with its competitors.

Analysts have recently been predicting the entry of pay-as-you-go broadband into the UK market to cater for the light user segment - especially as prices are dropping for operators. This week BT announced it's cutting its Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) prices by 40 per cent, as part of its strategy to stimulate competition and avoid Ofcom intervention.

The tide could be changing for Bulldog following a their own 'annus horribillis', according to the ISP anyway as Chief Commercial Operator, Andrew Morley told Web User magazine that complaints to Ofcom are down, and now "... comparable to the rest of the industry".

October saw industry regulator Ofcom, finally close their investigations into the ISPs troubles following public complaints - which even made it onto consumer rights TV programme.

The ISP is now said to be actively looking for customers again, and has launched a new marketing drive.

ISP Bulldog have been given the all clear after an investigation by the Telco regulator Ofcom, after introducing measures to prevent future problems.

The official investigation into Bulldog at the end of August following hundreds of complaints from it's users angry at being left without any phone or broadband service. It got to such a point that the ISP was even exposed during a BBC Watchdog programme.

Bulldog has promised to compensate all it's users who joined before July, at the height of the problems, but haven't given any details of any deal to date. It is also to report to Ofcom each month to keep the regulator informed of any issues to prevent a reoccurrence of the problem.

Who will be next in the dock?

Bulldog Broadband has officially linked up with consumer website My-Bulldog-Hell.co.uk, a site originally established to publicise and highlight the issues affecting the ISP.

The site who's moto is currently "Broadband Strife from Cable & Wireless" announced earlier this week that further to talks, the ISP will co-operate with the community in terms of feedback and addressing customers problems.

Those thinking all this sounds familiar may recall a similar tactic employed over 2 years ago which saw Bulldog's parent company Cable & Wireless purchase the critical website NTHellWorld.com, a play on the ISPs consumer product NTLWorld. Less than a year later the ISP shut the website down.

Its unclear how much control Bulldog will expect of the site, and how sanitised My-Bulldog-Hell's editorial will be over the coming months.

Customers of Bulldog Broadband publicly expressed their frustration with the ISP on Tuesday evening, through the BBC's consumer programme, Watchdog.

Watchdog claim over 500 complaints about the ISP, have been received over the summer period whilst the programme has been off air, with problems ranging from poor speeds through to total loss of both phone and a broadband service, of which readers will be only too familiar with (take a look here for our dedicated Bulldog coverage).

Unsurprisingly Bulldog's Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Morley promised change, with the announcement of a 500% increase in customer service staffing levels, a suspension on marketing of services and an improvement in the service its customers are receiving. Time will indeed tell.

Time will also let us learn the fate of an official investigation of the ISP, facilitated by industry regulator, Ofcom .

The BBC's web site has a small write up on the case to read here.

Ofcom has made good on the suspicion that it was to launch an investigation into Bulldog, following widespread customer complaints over billing, poor customer service in general and network performance.

If found guilty, the ISP could face fines of over £1m.

Cable & Wireless and Bulldog have made no comment on the matter, except for a letter to its customers, in which Bulldog's Chief Executive Emanuele Angelidis admits that gaps existed in its customer service and it had experienced problems with its billing systems which resulted in erroneous bills being generated.

The source their using is not the most concrete, but according to The Register, Cable and Wireless owned Bulldog Broadband are gearing up to launch 20Mbps ADSL within the next couple of weeks.

The news comes from a Bulldog punter who decided that the grass is greener with another ISP and called to cancel his service. As usual with such situations, the anti-churn tactics kicked in with the news to stem that migration temptation that 20Mbps is just around the corner. Bulldog, understandably are refusing to comment.

Will they? Won't they? For the hundreds of Bulldog customers who've complained about the ISP (of which an Ofcom review is pending), the launch of 20Mbps may just let them forget their pain.

Bulldog is planning a Video On Demand (VOD) service in the autumn if reports are correct.

Although there is no confirmation form Bulldog, or owners C&W, there are several factors which give weight to the rumour. First the recent announcement in June that it is launching an 8Mbps unlimited connection which would be idea for a VOD connection, then changes in Bulldog's personnel give a good hint of what is to come.

At the end of June there were several high level changes in management and one of the new appointments was Emanuele Angelidis who was previously chief executive of FastWeb, the leading broadband video, voice and data provider in Italy. Added to this is that  Elaine Safier, former strategy director with AOL Europe, has been appointed head of entertainment then things start to look like steering in the media content direction.

Although if the rumours are true and Homechoice already have an 8Mbps VOD service, it may be that this will not really catch on for most people until BT start the rollout of it's 21st century network (21CN) or ADSL2+ services which promise faster speeds over a larger area than the current LLU offerings.

Bulldog has been criticised for two radio adverts for it's 4Mbps broadband connection which were found to be misleading.

The adverts claimed that "Bulldog is Britain's fastest broadband for under 20 quid" and "Four megabytes of unlimited access giving you more of what you want, whenever you want it," it continued "At Bulldog we like to keep things simple. Giving you the fastest broadband for under 20 pounds. No limits. No strings. No waiting."

One disgruntled Bulldog user complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) saying that he had never archived 4Mbps, even though he was on a connection Bulldog said was 4Mbps.
Also the claims that is was under £20 were untrue and users also had to sign up to a Bulldog phone line at £10.50 a month.

ISP Bulldog, which seems to be the nations most unpopular ISP in regard to customer care issues, has announced a new management executive.
The reasons for the change are uncertain, but it seems like a shake-up maybe on the cards for the day to day running of the LLU ISP.

Maybe Wanadoo eying up Bulldog's owners, Cable and Wireless, has prompted the change in the management team.....

Are France Telecom owners of the UK's Wanadoo branded ISP, considering the purchase of Bulldog owners, Cable & Wireless ? Some sources say yes - whilst France Telecom denies the rumour. Bulldog, as usual in this type of affair, remain right lipped.

Wanadoo has made no secret of its intention to explore the relatively untapped market of LLU in the UK - so the purchase of a company with its foot firmly planted in the foundations of the UKs unblunding operation would seem, on paper, a logical choice.

During April 2005, Bulldog detailed that the ISP had installed its kit in 400 BT exchanges - several months ahead of schedule and has since announced plans to hook up a further 400 exchanges by the end of next year.

As widely expected, Bulldog have today announced the launch of their new 8Mbps service available through all 400 Bulldog unbundled exchanges.

Available under the guise of the existing Super@ctive, Call@ctive, Inter@ctive and Start@ctive, subscribers have the choice of either simply a broadband service, or to bundle in free unlimited local £ national phone calls.

A caveat of subscribing to Bulldog, means that as a LLU operator, subscribers must opt for a telephone line provided by Bulldog, which costs £10.50 per month, in addition to the Broadband/Call pricing which we've summarised below (prices include VAT).

In the case of Call@ctive and Start@ctive, addition hours of broadband use can be purchased for £1.50 per hour. New subscribers will also get a free USB ADSL modem - although other (chargeable) hardware options are available at the time of order, including wireless capable ADSL routers, from £110 (inclusive of VAT).

As if that was not enough to digest, users who sign up before June 15th (just 2 weeks!), Bulldog will reduce the first 3 months subscription pricing to £1 for the first month (including connection, but not subscribers who opt for a new line, which is charged at £60 discounted from the normal £120), and on the second month’s broadband subscription 50% will be knocked off. In all cases, a rolling 1 month contract is in force.

Recently Bulldog announced they would be looking at increasing their services availability by doubling the number of exchanges which the ISP has unbundled, making its service available from some 800 exchanges - around 16% of the UK's total.

Bulldog's press release can be read here

Bulldog's parent company Cable & Wireless have announced its considering expanding the ISPs coverage to reach over 50% of the UKs population, over the next three years, with a budget of £190m.

The network upgrade would be the 2nd major, although the largest (and most expensive) network upgrade plan announced since September 2004 when Cable & Wireless announced that 400 exchanges were to serve Bulldog services by February 2006.

As of last week, Bulldog's broadband services were available from some 320 of the UKs exchanges, said to be able to serve around 30% of the population with broadband.

Bulldog is an ISP that has consistently manage to hit the headlines, both in terms of innovative and vigorous products & pricing (such as 4Mbps ADSL for under £11 per month), but worrying, also for severe network problems late last year.

Bulldog have entered the PAYG broadband arena with a 4Mbps connection for £10.75 per month, and also reducing it's unlimited connection price to £19.50.

The offer is available to new customers signing up during a three week period until the 31st March and is open to both residential and business customers.

The PAYG Start@ctive and Call@ctivepackages are specifically designed for user who wants broadband speeds but don't have the need for an ‘always-on’ connection.
The Start@ctive package includes a 4Mbps broadband connection, a home phone line and 400 free minutes of time online. The Call@ctive package includes a 4Mbps broadband connection, a home phone line and unlimited local and UK national phone calls, the broadband portion is at £14.75 a month.

Price reductions are also applied to Bulldog unlimited services. Bulldog Inter@ctiveincludes a 4Mbps broadband connection and home phone line, with the broadband connection reduced from £29.50 to £19.50 a month. The Bulldog Super@ctive service, which includes unlimited calls to UK local and national numbers is now available with a broadband charge of £28.50 per month, instead of £41.50.

The reduced prices will apply for 12 months, after this time they will revert to the standard charge.
Of note is the fact that the Home Phone part of the package is priced at £10.50 per month and is added to the broadband charge.

www.bulldogbroadband.com for the details.

Cable and Wireless owned Bulldog has been asked to not "promise a service standard that could not be provided" by the advertising watchdog, The ASA.

The investigation by the authority came as a result of three key issues, namely challenging the "ultimate broadband experience", "peek of speed" and "makes other broadband services look like dial-up" slogans used by Bulldog in many advertising campaigns.

Of the three, only the "ultimate broadband experience" complaint was upheld, justified because consumers would consider the slogan in respect of the service they could potentially receive from the ISP. The Authority noted the "severe" customer service issues and poor speeds during September and October of 2004, which saw the ISP go on the defensive, suspending all orders for ADSL, in an attempt to get things back on track.

Bulldog now uses the much safer "More bang. Less buck" instead.

The full adjudication can be read here.

LLU service provider Bulldog have revamped their broadband lineup, introducing a time metered concept to their popular 4Mbps service, although with no mention of any price caps.

Start@ctive, priced at £15.50 per month features 400 minutes of online time each month, with additional time online charged at 2.5p per minute, no matter how much you download in that period. This could equate to around 85p per GB downloaded (when downloading at the maximum possible downstream speed), possibly one of the cheapest in the industry.

Call@ctive, which removes the free bundled time online, instead giving the subscriber free local and national UK numbers. Time spent online is charged similarly to that of Start@ctive at 2.5p per minute.

Both Start@ctive and Call@ctive come with incentives until the 28th February offering unlimited online time for 6 months, as well both products attracting just £1 setup fee, and the first month being free. Bulldog's other products, Super@ctive and Inter@active both remain unchanged, offering unlimited time online or unlimited time online and unlimited local and national phone calls.

Of major concern however is that neither Call@ctive nor Start@ctive's details mention any form of price cap, offering reassurance of what a users likely monthly bill would be. Given Bulldog's Super@ctive and Inter@ctive are the unlimited version of their newly introduced products, it would have been nice for Bulldog to announce price caps at similar price points. Accidentally leave your broadband connected all day and you could be faced with a bill of £36 for that day alone. Thats could be as much as £1100 a month ! For broadband !

Bulldog's services are available in only a limited number of exchanges across the UK. To check availability, use Bulldog's online checker here.

Samknows today reports that Bulldog has recently unbundled 7 exchanges outside of the M25 area.

The 7 exchanges based in Herts, Luton Bedfordshire, Essex and Chelmsford will therefore presumably start to offer their sought after 4Mbps ADSL services in the not too distant future.

The 7 exchanges are :

Bulldog have entered into the new year sale frenzy by offering customers that sign up to one of its 4Mbps broadband and phone combination packages 25% off their yearly bill.
This according to Bulldog, will save customers up to £186 over the course of a year.

The Inter@ctive service includes a 4Mbps broadband connection, telephone calls and phone line with no line rental charge. The monthly price is reduced from it's current £40 to £30, which is 25% for the mathematically minded.The Super@ctive service, which differs in that it includes unlimited calls to UK local and national numbers, is reduced from £52 per month to £39 per month.

Even the cost of transferring a BT line to a Bulldog service is reduced by 25% from £60 to £45 and the cost of installing a new line is reduced from £120 to £90.

The offer is open until the end of January, but the bad news (for some) is that the services are limited to the London region.
Just a note that the Bulldog site still displays the December offer....

Bulldog have quietly updated the number of exchanges at which they offer their 4MB LLU for £40 service (including telephone line rental)

This takes them up to just over 60 LLU exchanges (from 38 previously) in total. Bulldog, recently aquired by cable network operator Cable and Wireless, aim to have nationwide rollout of LLU to exchanges during 2005.

All of the first wave of new exchanges appear to be in and about London which was to be expected - see table below for new exchanges.

ISP Bulldog have today extended their introductory offer on their 'Inter@ctive' and 'Super@ctive' 4Mbit products featuring no setup costs, and the first 2 months rental free of charge, saving over £160.

Although available in a limited number of exchanges (38) across the UK, both products offer a broadband connection up to 4Mbps downstream with 400k upstream with an unlimited data allowance - a nice touch given all the ISP launching 2Mbit products today with 1GB a month limits. Both Inter@active (£40 per month) and Super@ctive also include telephone line rental, meaning subscribers can loose their BT line. Super@ctive (at a slightly more expensive £52 per month) also includes unlimited free local and national UK landline calls.

If your lucky enough to be served by one of the Bulldog exchanges, you can find out more here.

Forever in the limelight (although often for the wrong reasons) Bulldog have found themselves under scrutiny of communications watchdog OFCOM, over alledged unfair terms and conditions.

If you can get there^*, The Register today carries a sketchy article relating to an investigation. The Ofcom website is equally as scant on detail citing only that "Ofcom has received a complaint about terms in Bulldog Communications' contract 'Bulldog Broadband Alltime Terms and Conditions', and is investigating whether any terms may be unfair."

^*Around 9am UK time, The Register came under DDOS attack - so you might have a few problems getting to the site.

Earlier this month we reported how the Internet Service Providers Association had no plans to ask troubled Bulldog to remove advertisement of its "Best Consumer Broadband" award after a petition called for the revoking. Well, it seems ISPA have backed down - and indeed asked Bulldog to remove the advertisement of the Award from its telephone systems - according to The Register.

Bulldog who have also removed the Award logo from their website have simply stated the logo has been removed due to a redesign of the site.

At the time of writting, a quick look at the code for Bulldog's website - shows the designers have simply commented out the reference to the ISPA Award logo.

Cable and Wireless owned Bulldog Communications have suspended all new ADSL orders - until such time that the ISP can be assured of providing a service customers can expect.

For sometime IPStream based users of the ISP (estimated to be the largest segment of customers) have complained of poor transfer speeds and even worse customer services. Now Bulldog has taken the (realistic) decision that they cannot continue taking orders - when they cannot resolve the customers problems they already have.

In a press release yesterday, Bulldog have blamed an "administrative error" which has caused a significant delay in a recent order for additional IPStream capacity. Bulldog advise that BT have committed to providing the extra capacity by the 4th October (under 2 weeks from now). Extra Bulldog staff have also been drafted in to help deal with the mountain of complaints and enquiries.

They end the release with a little note : "Until recently our reputation for customer service was a source of pride for us and envy for our competitors. We intend to win it back."

Despite many a call, Bulldog will not be stripped of its "Best Consumer Broadband ISP 2004" awarded by the Internet Service Providers Association - contrary to an online petition accruing in excess of 300 votes requesting such.

Thats the blurb thats been penned by some users who are experiencing both service and support problems.

According to The Register, ISPA has advised that there are no plans to remove the award presented earlier this year, and that complaining users should contact ISPA themselves to mediate with Bulldog, which some users have already done.

And so maybe there is light at the end of the preverbial tunnel - with ISPA today advising that a meeting will be held between themselves and the agreeved ISP this week. Hopefully things will get better before they get any worse.

Recently acquired by Cable & Wireless, Bulldog Communications seems to be bringing its notorious faster speed broadband packages to 400 carefully targeted exchanges in the UK over the next 18 months.

Cable & Wireless, reports The TimesOnline, announced yesterday plans to spend over £100million in the process of unbundling some of BTs busiest exchanges, with ADSL access packages targeting the heavy broadband user and SME's. Interestingly, mention is also made that customers who want television services distributed via their high speed line will also be on the agenda - clearly a sign of C&Ws intent to distribute media in a similar ilk to that of popular London based, HomeChoice.

There are presently less than 320 unbundled exchanges in the UK, with <a href=http://www.easynet.net/" target="_blank">Easynet being by far the majority "owner" in this field, with over 200 of these. Bulldog have currently enabled less than 40.

Bulldog have announced a new broadband and phone package for their residential customers.

Both packages include the standard Bulldog 4Mbps internet connection, but punters can now choose the phone service they require.
Bulldog Super@ctive, which costs £52per month, means that you'll get all calls to UK landline numbers for free. Or with Bulldog Inter@ctive, at £40per month, you'll get UK landline calls on a pay-as-you-go basis at the same rates as BT's  Option 1 price plan, but without any minimum charge.

There is good news and bad news. As there is no need to have a BT phone line installed users will save on BT's £34.50 quarterly line rental, the bad news is that as it's a LLU service only those in Central London, on one of the 38 exchanges Bulldog have equipment in, can use the service.

Those who sign up before the end of September will receive a 50% discount on connection and 3 months rental.

Details at Bulldog.

Word on the grapevine is that the ISP Bulldog is to no longer act as a reseller for any of their ADSL products (Both DataStream and LLU-based), and for all of their SDSL solutions. This move is sure to upset many of Bulldogs reselling partners such as Mailbox Internet, Hi-Velocity and Fusion Media Network. However, it should be noted that existing customers will not yet be affected by the change.

Although there has been no confimation of Bulldogs decision, all the information available points to this conclusion

Historically, Bulldog have used Local Loop Unbundling (a method used to provide companies such as Bulldog to access an incumbent's network to provide services direct to the home) to provide cheaper and varied alternative broadband connections to that of other more mainstream ISPs.

No official announcement has come from Bulldog yet, but the move is expected to see a cessation of the ability to resell any DataStream based or unbundled ADSL products from Bulldog. Additionally, the move will also mean the reselling of a small subset of Symmetrical DSL (SDSL) products will also end (10:1 contented services). This also means that resellers will not have the chance to sell Bulldog4 (which saw 4Mbit ADSL available for as little as £30 per month) or the recently launched Bulldog 2&2 - an SDSL offering 2Mbit connectivity in both up and down streams.

In May of this year, Bulldog sold out to Cable and Wireless for nearly £19m, and we're now seeing the second major redirection in the companies focus. It was only last month that we reported how Bulldog were about to stop selling DataStream based solutions, such as the popular, but now non-orderable PrimeTime.

We've been contacted by a number of people today all trying to find out one thing. "Why have Bulldog stopped advertising their PrimeTime product on their website?"

Offering PrimeTime, Bulldog first brought the likes of 1Mbit and 2Mbit ADSL products into the price range suitable for home users (a 2Mbit PrimeTime service was priced at £24.99 including VAT - remarkably cheap given other ISPs offerings). With a 1 or 2Mbit subscription the service would enable subscribers to download at the 'de-facto' 512Kbps during peak hours (8am until 6pm) with the servicing increasing up to either 1Mbit or 2Mbit during other times - a service perfect for those connection remains mostly redundant during the daytime. Why pay for that larger bandwidth when your not using it ?

How could Bulldog do this? By using an alternative product from BTWholesale called DataStream. Available much cheaper than the more prevalent IPStream upon which most of ISPs solutions revolve around, DataStream also permits much more flexibility in what services ISPs offer, from bandwidth through to contention. Using this flexibility Bulldog were able to provide remarkable bandwidth to endusers for quite often at least half the price of any other mainstream ISPs.

Is this a sign that Bulldog have decided to withdraw from the DataStream market and concentrate more on IPStream products ? Maybe the ISP is set to announce detailed on unbundling exchanges throughout the UK? Or maybe Bulldog are just simplifying their product range. Who knows - but what is known, is that since Bulldog were bought by Cable & Wireless, we've seen some major changes from the ISP, first with 4Mbit ADSL available for just £30 within unbundled exchanges in London, and now this possible movement away from DataStream.

We're waiting on Bulldog to get back to us, but we'll bring you more on this as we get it.

Oh, and we should finally note that current users of PrimeTime need not think that their product will disapear into the ether - we're assured by the technical folk at Bulldog that support will continue for these subscribers.

You might recall our recent 4Mb for £30 submission a couple of days ago. Well, how about getting that 4Mb for £20 instead ?

Orders placed for Bulldog4 before 31st July will benefit from the first 3 months at an introductory price of just £20 per month, after which, the price reverts to the normal (but still great value) £30 per month. Bulldog 4 is available in the following exchanges.

For more info, visit the Bulldog 4 website

Bulldog have announced a new 4Mb service for their LLU customers, and yes, this is a "all the time" service - not just off peak only like some of their other offers

Also, as a sign of their recent takeover by C&W and the announcement that will be expanding their LLU service from the current 38 exchanges to 200 odd.. the FAQ includes:

• What are Bulldog's plans for rolling out Bulldog 4 beyond Central London?
• Over the next few months we will launch the service in a number of cities across the UK. We will publish details as we go.

It is also their view that "most" (not all) lines will work at 4MB - obviously they are using different dB/SNR limits to BT

See the Bulldog site for full details.

There isn't much information at the moment, but it appears that the LLU Bulldog has been sold to Cable and wireless.
C & W have said that it is paying £18.6 million pounds for the provider, who is only one of a few ISP's who have gone the LLU route and currently has it's own equipment in 38 BT Group exchanges in central London.

The full press release can be read here.