BT announced today that it has agreed to acquire Brightview Group Limited
('Brightview'), the internet service provider (ISP) owned by Brightview plc
for approximately £15.8m in cash, subject to approval from Brightview's
shareholders.

Established in April 2001, Brightview is a small consumer ISP with a strong
reputation for high-quality customer and technical support. Brightview
operates the ISP brands Madasafish and Global Internet, as well as the
Which? -award-winning Waitrose ISP. Brightview is also working with John
Lewis Partnership to launch its new ISP and telephony service under the
'GreenBee' brand.

Brightview currently has around 62,000 broadband customers and generated
revenues of £11.0m and EBITDA of £3.0m in the year ended 30 June 2006.

Ian Livingston, BT Retail chief executive, said: 'BT already provides the
UK's most popular and best-performing ADSL broadband service. 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.'

Regards
Sunil

"Sunil Sood" <news@soods.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:5f6snfF39du2rU1@mid.individual.net...
They're getting in everywhere!

I migrated to Plusnet to get away from BT Internet and saved quite a bit of
money in so doing.
BT then bought Plusnet.

As a result of Plusnet's recent problems (now hopefully resolved after BT's
cash injection) I was reluctant to recommend Plusnet to my village hall
committee who wanted a broadband connection.
I did some research and found that the Brightview companies scored very many
plus-points in consumer surveys, so we went with one of them (Globalnet).
Now BT has bought them!

I think they're stalking me...
;-)

George

"Sunil Sood" wrote:

Oh dear.

So it's goodbye to all that, then. Not that I've needed any support.

They also have dialup customers, like me.

customer support and quality of service will deteriorate, as is the
norm when small companies are bought out by large ones. We feel sorry
for our dialup users who, being a very small fraction of our income,
can expect even poorer connectivity as we save money by neglecting to
maintain our modem racks. We will also be increasing the monthly
subscription rate for them to bring it to the level of other major UK
ISPs. In addition, as a further money saving measure, we will be
discontinuing free access to Giganews for ex-Brightview customers.
After all, NNTP is so last-century and the fashionable thing nowadays
is to use web forums.

Cynical? Not me.

On Sat, 7 Jul 2007 18:48:02 +0100, "Ant" <not@home.today> wrote:

BT Broadband customers currently have free access to Giganews so why
would BT discontinue it for ex-Brightview customers.

Maybe BT will learn something about customer services from Brightview.
They quickly learned and implemented traffic management and bandwidth
throttling after acquiring Plusnet.

"Ant" <not@home.today> wrote in message
news:6OednX0FXLNrTBLbnZ2dnUVZ8t2snZ2d@brightview.c o.uk...
BT Internet or BT Yahoo! or whatever they call themselves today get their
newsfeed from Giganews and it's free to their customers so it's not all
bad - but you're spot on with the rest (

John

"John" <aaa@bbb.ccc> wrote in message
news:g6ednZKGKPcMIQ3bnZ2dnUVZ8vednZ2d@bt.com...
Love the humour!
However, Plusnet have improved greatly since being taken over by BT and
having received a nice fat cash-injection in the process.
On the other hand, Brightview were/are pretty good anyway, so who knows what
the future holds?

George

"George Weston" <geoweston@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:5fc1c9F3brf9mU1@mid.individual.net...
So long as it's not Zen internet.

I feel for the Brightview customers and wish them all the best in the
future.

"It's Me" wrote:
I hope they don't follow the trend of dropping usenet like some major
ISPs here and in the US have done.

That's good to know.

Hopefully not me finding another ISP again.

I thought they were still ok.

Ta. I'm keeping my fingers crossed with baited breath, or sumthin'.

On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:18:01 +0100, "Ant" <not@home.today> wrote:


Have you got a long line issue or something? You always struck me as
more of a high speed type of person than someone who would persist
with dialup if they didn't have to.


Jim.

"James Egan" wrote:

I have a crap line problem. A year or so ago I had all the wire from
my phone point to the pole replaced because of noise and there was an
immediate improvement. During the last few months it's been going bad
again. Maybe all that rain, but there are no floods here.

Interesting. What are the indications?

Inertia and being a cheapskate are probably the main reasons. I do
mostly low-bandwidth stuff at home (newsgroups, mail, the odd web
page, a bit of malware to play with). I use the 'net as part of my
job (perhaps that's where the "high speed person" impression comes
from) so any big downloads I can do at work.

On Fri, 6 Jul 2007 13:59:45 +0100, "Sunil Sood"
<news@soods.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

And I was just about to recommend Waitrose internet to a friend .


--
AnthonyL