Broadband News

Bulldog takes another bite out of 1Mbps prices...

Bulldog is running another offer until the end of September 30th on its PrimeTime 1000 product. How does 1Mbps for just £23.49 (inc VAT) sound?

The offer is for a limited time period and includes a slightly higher than normal activation fee of £82.24 including VAT, but over the course of the basic 12 month contract this means a saving of £46.94 including VAT. Bulldogs PrimeTime services are designed to only burst up-to the full speed at off-peak times, at the peak times 8am to 6pm on weekdays the service is limited to a peak of 512kbps.

Even though this is a short time offer, offering a 1Mbps service for £23.49 is likely to upset a few apple carts. Bulldogs offer is actually a lower price than the Wholesale cost of BTs IPStream Home 1000 trial. In terms of whether pricing like this is sustainable, only time will be the ultimate judge, but similar pricing is not uncommon in the U.S. when providers are trying to increase their market share. Additionally with DSL services the economies of scale often requires providers to grow their userbase rapidly.

If offers like this become common, and are followed up by other providers, we hope that the basic things like quality of service will not be forgotten. Past offers from various providers have shown that even though a service is cheap, many peoples expectations still remain high. One big factor with the UK ADSL services to date has been the low level of apparent contention, but with ever increasing downward pressure on pricing, increasing the actual amount of contention users see may be one way of creating products with a low headline price. The forthcoming BT IPStream Home 1000 trial is not without its concerns too, since if this attracts the majority of heavy users, the effects of contention may potentially be felt more by Home 500 users.


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