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Wanadoo Broadband
by: Neil Shevlin
Wanadoo have always strived to be at the front of the UK's
broadband industry. They were one of the first ISP's
to provide unlimited dialup, the first ISP to provide 1mb
broadband at under £20 a month and this summer are trialling
a method to provide broadband without having to own a BT phone
line in a technique called Local Loop Unbundling.
Wanadoo in the UK started in 2001 when the French company
took over the already popular Freeserve. Freeserve was created
by the Dixon's Group in 1998, back in the days of a
56kbps pay per minute dialup connection. Even back then they
were the cheapest ISP around.
If Wanadoo's large investment in LLU proves successful,
BT stand to lose a lot of their customers. LLU will provide
a decent alternative to BT's standard ADSL at a much
cheaper price. Costs to implement LLU have dropped significantly
in the UK to a stage where many ISPs are seeing it as the
way forward, although it is already used by a small number
of ISPs, Wanadoo will be the first to bring it to the mass
market. LLU would allow users cheaper or, more likely, faster
internet, allowing users better services such as live video
on demand and internet telephony.
Being the thorn in BT's side for some time now, Wanadoo
have constantly been upgrading their existing network. Recently
they doubled their standard 1mbps package to 2mbps, with BT
mirroring the change to avoid losing customers. Both BT and
Wanadoo implement a monthly cap on their customer's
bandwidth, BT limit their users to 1 GB but Wanadoo's
is double that at 2 GB a month. Wanadoo currently have 0.7
million broadband users while BT has 1.7 million people subscribed
to one of their broadband packages. Wanadoo have announced
their ambition to match BT's 1.7 million by 2008.
Wanadoo currently offer services of 2mbps broadband with
a maximum limit of 30 GB on their premium package, they also
offer Pay As You Go and unlimited 56k dialup. The fastest
broadband offered by their competitors in the UK is currently
8mbps unlimited broadband. With a Wanadoo Broadband connection
you don't pay any connection costs, receive a free modem
and a bonus of 6 months free local calls on your phone line.
Unfortunately Wanadoo don't have such a good reputation
with their customers. ISP's are legendarily known to
have poor customer support and Wanadoo is no different. They
also enforce their monthly caps by cutting off customers or
limiting users who have inadvertently and without knowing
gone over their limit. Their services are also not strangers
to a bit of down-time.
The future of Wanadoo hangs in the balance, as last month
the French company that owns Wanadoo and also the Orange mobile
phone operator revealed that it is going to scrap the Wanadoo
name in favour of Orange. Their poor reputation could explain
the desire to re-brand with an internationally known and trusted
name, with the added possibility of cross-market opportunities.
Starting early next year all Wanadoo customers will be having
their email address's changed. The French company Télécom
spent £20 million renaming Freeserve, saying that Wanadoo
boasted "power, passion and dynamism". The cost
of re-branding again will be around £135 million in
the first year, although they plan to break even by the end
of 2007.
About The Author
Neil Shevlin is the owner of UK Cheap Broadband which is
a great place to find broadband links, resources and articles.
For more information go to: UK Cheap Broadband www.ukcheapbroadband.
© Copyright 2005
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