Broadband

Tiscali, who own both Pipex and Bulldog, have been angering both their residential and business customers this week.

Tiscali have begun migrating Pipex’s ADSL customers on to their LLU network, which covers some 731 exchanges. Concerned Pipex users have been contacting us about the move, with users complaining of issues ranging from poor speeds and latency, to complete loss of service. The issue is certainly not confined to our inbox either.

Tiscali purchased Pipex’s 570,000 users last July. With it they also acquired Bulldog, Freedom2surf and Nildram (all previously owned by Pipex).

The process of moving customers on to Tiscali’s LLU network is by no means a new one. The cost saving exercise has been in use on Tiscali’s own customers for a couple of years now. PlusNet famously signed a deal with Tiscali two years ago and moved a large number of users on to their LLU network. The scheme was hampered by problems from day one, and PlusNet eventually abandoned it.

Let’s hope that Pipex’s users are not alienated in a similar way. In an increasingly cut-throat market, Pipex’s users are some of the most loyal around. Some have been with the company for over ten years.

Users of Bulldog’s SDSL services have been equally up in arms this week. In early January SDSL customers were informed that their service would be ceased by late February, as Bulldog were discontinuing the service.

This move may surprise many, as SDSL customers are typically the most profitable and ultimately the ones you want to hang on to most. Bulldog’s SDSL userbase will be quite sizeable too; in the early days of SDSL their only competitors were BT and Easynet, and they beat both on price and features by quite a margin.

They achieved this price advantage by using their LLU exchange footprint to their advantage. This LLU network is now owned by Cable & Wireless, so this sudden termination of service may be caused by terms changing between Bulldog and Cable & Wireless.

Bulldog are offering an olive branch though; customers are being offered free activation if they “move” to Nildram’s SDSL product. The wording of the letter issued to customers makes no mention of migration, but does speak of making the process “as simple as possible”. Nildram’s SDSL product has traditionally been provisioned over BT Wholesale’s IPStream SDSL product, so no easy migration would be possible.

Update: Two business ISPs - Fusion Media Networks and Fluidata - have been in touch to say that they can offer unbundled SDSL at contention ratios of 1:1 and 5:1 in the same areas as Bulldog (by utilising the C&W Access wholesale product). Whilst no migration is possible, a new install can apparently be completed within two weeks.

Tags: Bulldog, Fluidata, Freedom2surf, Fusion Media Networks, Nildram, Pipex, Tiscali