ISP Review investigates BTs new BT 'No Frills' Broadband ADSL product

Essentially the only way for BTB to be a success is if the operator can directly advertise and convince enough people that its offer is cheaper and better than the competition, which is nothing less than an outright lie. It may be cheaper than a handful of ISPs (BTO, AOL, Freeserve), although the majority of full ISP services cost less and offer more than BTB.

BTB - Can It Succeed?

With the ability to issue targeted advertising to every one of its customers, to prey on people's lack of broadband knowledge and the impotence of Oftel to act, BT has already won.

Unfortunately the media isn't helping; most of the reports we've seen only compare BTB to more expensive services from major providers such as Freeserve and AOL etc. Typically this damages the industry by completely ignoring the majority of other ISPs, which are cheaper and offer full services!

Once again the Ex-CEO of ISP CloudNine is able to note another aspect, "BT have quite deliberately set the price at a high level to deflect some criticism of their action. They are, of course, able to vary this at any time once the concept of what they are doing has gained acceptance."

Vispa highlight another issue, one that crops up with BTs continued comparisons between BTB and the few more expensive ISPs, "This market is very price aware....if people can save £1, they will....and the only winner is BT."

On the other hand PlusNET prefers to look at things in a more positive light, "We believe that BT and Freeserve will create even greater demand for ADSL over the coming months and PlusNet is well positioned to benefit from that increased demand.

If BT Broadband is a success as a product PlusNet also stands to gain as we are a "services partner" to BT Retail offering communication [a], productivity [b] and data storage[c] tools, as well as "upgrades" to our own ADSL products for BT retail customers."

Of course this doesn't go for all ISPs and BT isn't likely to do anything that could seriously damage its own market, thus we doubt everybody would agree with PlusNETs comments.

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