Network management Toolkit

Bulldog: We'll win 24Mbps broadband race

Graeme Wearden ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 03 Feb 2006 16:10 GMT

Bulldog claims it is doing a better job than its competitors at bringing the high speed broadband service ADSL2+ to market.

The Cable & Wireless subisidiary announced on Wednesday that it is extending its ADSL2+ trials to Manchester and Liverpool, following earlier work in London. The company, which suffered major problems with its broadband service last year, plans to launch a commercial service this spring.

ADSL2+ can provide download speeds of up to 24Mbps, much faster than today's ADSL broadband services, but is a relatively immature technology.

Ruth Pickering, head of product development at Bulldog, told ZDNet UK that the trials will examine how ADSL2+ performs over telephone lines of varying lengths and quality. It will also look into the process of migrating customers from ADSL to ADSL2+.

Fellow ISP Be launched its pilot ADSL2+ service last year, from selected local exchanges in London, but Pickering claimed that Bulldog had taken a better approach by trialling its service for longer.

"Be only trialled its ADSL2+ service for a month, which is why it has such restricted availability," claimed Pickering. "You need to trial it for several months to learn the lessons, as there are factors such as the possibility of speed deterioration over time."

Last October, Be apologised for suffering technical problems that meant that one in ten of new customers weren't getting their service within five weeks.

In response to Bulldog's comments, Be said it had been keen to get valuable feedback from its user base.

"We invited people to work with us to develop the capabilities of our system," explained a Be spokesman. "As a result, we increased the upload speed because of feedback from our pilot members."

If Bulldog does launch a commercial ADSL2+ service this spring, it will be well ahead of BT, which is still testing an 8Mbps product.

"BT is a very, very long way behind," said Pickering, who suggested that it was hard for a company as large as BT to launch new broadband technologies quickly.