Bulldog broadband (Bulldog Broadband)

Member Name: paddeh

Product:	Bulldog Broadband
Date:	09/01/06 (410 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Much better than most ISPs in terms of speed + pricing

Disadvantages: My experience has been good, the same cannot be said for all

Who are bulldog:
Bulldog were setup in 2000 and are part of the cable & wireless company. The company's initial aims were to provide high speed broadband in the UK for a reasonable price; something most UK ISPs were failing to do.

My connection experience:
I signed up for the 8 meg broadband package in August 2005 after recieving a leaflet through my door promising broadband like i had never seen it before. I was amazed that a company would provide me with 8 meg for £30 with no download limits; I had to be dreaming! After considering this for a few days i decided to sign up and the sales person i spoke to was most helpful. I paid my £1 connection fee which was heavily discounted thanks to a promotion (usually £60) and was told that they would take care of everything: switching my telephone line etc. My eta for connection was 6 weeks which i could live with but in reality if my memory serves me correctly it only took about 4-5 weeks. I received all the relevant paper work through the post before my connection date explaining what i needed to do to get online i.e. username, password which was very helpful etc. By this point i had been unable to connect to the internet for a few days so i was really looking forward to my first day back online with an 8meg connection!

My connection speed:
The speed i received from bulldog was amazing at first; somehow they had managed to provide me with 7meg when BT were only able to provide me with 1! I had to pinch myself so i ran a few speedtests to make sure i could actually download as fast as my sync speed. If you wish to make the most out of your connection in terms of stability + speed make sure you have a decent modem. If you have a usb modem throw it away and purchase an all in one router/modem.

Customer Service:
Now after a few days online i started to noticed i was being disconnected during peak times so i rang up the support desk to log an incident. The wait time to get through to someone was about 30 minutes which i thought was a little long; they took all my details and told me i would receive a call from a engineer the next day. Luckily for me someone phoned back about 20 minutes later (technical person) and started to tell me exactly what the problem was. Some of the things he mentioned went over my head at first but i got the jist of it; basically i was 1.5 km from the exchange (line length not straight line distance) so the noise on the line was giving me problems. Their solution was to reduce my speed to 4meg in order to improve my connection stability which worked a treat. I was in no mood to complain about the speed reduction because a) BT could never give me 4meg and b) my connection was stable which provided me with a better service.

Overall i was fairly satisfied with tech support and over the 5 months i have been with bulldog i have called a few times. Recently thanks to a watchdog investigation their tech support has improved majorly so no more waiting in a queue before speaking to someone! I was impressed that my problem had been sorted so quickly so bulldog got the thumbs up from me here.

Pricing: When i signed up 8meg broadband was available for £30 but recently this has been dropped to £21.50 for new customers. If you are an existing customer you need to pay £25 to have you account upgraded in order to qualify for this discounted price. I haven't done this yet.

How does bulldog compare to its competitors?:
Recently a number of ISPs have been rolling out ADSL2+ promising speeds of up to 24meg at only £24. I would be wary of some companies as i have heard they are experiencing major problems and a lot of customers are not happy (BE is one such company). This goes to show that most companies have problems but it is how they sort them out which defines them. Sadly Bulldog have not mentioned anything about adsl2+ yet which is worrying me slightly as Bulldog are no longer the leading ISP they set out to become.

Overall:
If you are frustrated with BTs maximum 2 meg broadband then i would consider a move over to bulldog as my experience has been almost flawless. Switching you phone/isp is a major commitment so make sure you look at what other companies are providing before jumping in.

Ratings:
Customer service: 7/10
Speed: 8/10 (not bulldogs fault i live too far from the exchange for 8 meg)
Price: 6/10 (would be 8/10 if i qualified for £21.50 a month)
Overall: 7/10

Summary: Fairly decent company which aspires to be the best it can be.