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BT opens wallet for Brightview

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BT has coughed £15.8m cash for Brightview, the ISP group behind internet access from Waitrose, Madasafish, and Global.

The Brightview ISP brands, which have a total of 62,000 broadband customers, regularly buck market trends to top customer satisfaction surveys. Established in 2001, the firm was last sold in 2004, for £25m, when it had 300,000 dial-up punters.

BT Retail chief executive Ian Livingstone said: "This acquisition will ensure that Brightview's customers can benefit from our market-leading services, resources, and technology development as well as the excellent customer service they're already receiving."

Privately-held Brightview coined EBITDA of £3m for the year ending 30 June 2006, on the back of revenues of £11m. The purchase is BT's second swallow of a relative minnow in the last year, after the £67m in loose change it dropped for PlusNet last November.

BT was linked to pricier takeover target Pipex earlier this year, but the rumour fizzled, with Tiscali emerging as the only interested party. ®

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Latest Comments
Anonymous Coward

Ofcom asleep at the wheel again :(

First BT bought Plusnet, who conveniently already had at least one ex-BT broadband bod in their management team (step up Neil Armstrong).

And now Brightview? Just as I was about to sample the delights of Waitrose broadband.

Who's left now besides Zen?

I realise monopoly is the natural state of British big business, but Ofcom is supposed to be watching this one. I also realise Ofcom's management team is (or was) a bunch of useless ex-NTL folks, but...

grrrrr.

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Anonymous Coward

April 1st?? Hoax?? "...customer service [no change]..." Tell me it is so

Quote: BT Retail chief executive Ian Livingstone said: "This acquisition will ensure that Brightview's customers can benefit from our market-leading services, resources, and technology development as well as the excellent customer service they're already receiving."

Dear God, Please forgive me for ignoring you - never celebrating you - and predicting your non-existence so oft, for taking your name in vain... forgive me many things even if I always stated 'agnostic' to bureaucrats, but say this will prove true ....

- that we [Madasafish customers] will continue getting the same customer service; that Ian Livingstone is not indicating that by moving to BT customer service we will be getting the service that Madasafish were offering us?

- that BT won't wreck the credible simplicity of ADSL service offerings provided by Madasafish in stark contrast to the unimaginable complexity of BTs services and tariffs?

- that BT won't introduce excess small print terms and conditions in an apparent attempt to hoodwink the most adept of us into thinking that we might get a better deal only to find that when push comes to shove adn we have a problem we get the BT post privatisation service centre merry-go-round that would have us believe that our problem lies with some other (BT) business/department, one which they cannot transfer us to or whom we are not allowed to speak to [BTW - BT Wholesale] or who require another lengthy telephone menu interaction complete with hold music and going around in circles if one is to come close to talking to someone, that it is beyond the power of this customer service representative to help us during this lifetime, and that no one in Bangalore is in the best position, either by way of technical empowerment, management structure/edict, education, geographical location, clarity of communication via IP telephony, comprehension of English and UK accents to assist us today, however politely and at whatever length they might willingly try to do so even though we simply require a message be sent to a UK based BT engineer to attend the exchange to fix our small familiar ADSL technical glitch

[stuck IP profile following transfer away from BT ADSL sound familiar to anyone? what will arise from transfer to BT ADSL I hate to think, and who to complain to in the absence of an ISP with a contract with BTW? Who will fight the behemoth? That is when you need a good enough ISP to shake BT for you whilst you sleep, not another octopus arm of that same behemoth which is disinclined or unable to demand contract fulfilment from its brethren octopus-arms ... if you like my octopus analogy to BTs trading arms, some of this http://www.octopus.com/ will sound strangely familiar ... lack of skeletal structure, much maligned creature, deaf, unique self defense mechanisms...]

... Oh Lord, tell me that I won't find myself with BT-Yahoo email and services any time soon? Tell me they won't add layers of needless complexity to the Madasafish website? Tell me that billing will continue as normal and that the bill won't become part of land line billing, confusing the deal I or my customers are getting to the point that we lose sight of just what that deal is, negating true market comparisons, such that we cannot compare it to current products offered elsewhere and move when it would suit us better?

Tell me too how this serves competition rules in the UK?

Sure, Madasafish were taking BT customers and making them happy and satisfied and content with technology... but tell me now what was so wrong with that?

Congratuations to Madasafish share holders on making a tidy profit.

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Anonymous Coward

Title

Noooo ! Why I am thinking BT (the great company I work for..)is going to muck up transferring this lot over, like it did with, erm, every other takeover.

Think I'll give up helping customers, and just give out the complaints number, and transfer the customers who phone up to canacellations so they can have a proper ISP.

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