Virgin Media reports 54,600 new cable customers
Thursday 07 August 2008 14:51:54 by Andrew Ferguson
The second quarter results from Virgin Media show a growing interest in its premier 20Mbps cable broadband service, with an 82% increase in the number of subscribers to their fastest broadband product.
Cable broadband (termed On-net by Virgin Media) saw net additions of 54,600 in the quarter, which is an increase on the previous quarter which saw 45,800 additions. The rise in subscriptions for its 20Mbps offering, means that 9.3% of cable broadband customers take the fastest option. Additionally, the upgrade of the 4Mbps service to 10Mbps which is 70% complete has also resulted in more people opting for that price point. The total number of cable broadband customers stands at 3,563,400 up from 3,191,900 a year ago.
Virgin Media provides ADSL services to the parts of the UK its cable service does not reach, and the story is somewhat different, with Q2 2008 having lost customers, 272,700 now compared with a peak of 287,300 in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Mobile broadband is apparently on the way from Virgin Media and is to be expected in the fourth quarter. Other developments are that the much talked about 50Mbps service is still on course for the second half of 2008 even though it seems like an eternity since the news of the Ashford trial in September 2007.
With just 9.3% taking the 20Mbps £37 a month top tier broadband product, one has to wonder how many will opt for what one presumes will be a more expensive 50Mbps product. Virgin Media has steered clear of publishing usage limits, but if it was to offer entry level products with a clear usage limit of 40GB a month that saw the 50Mbps product retailing at £20 a month it would probably see a rush to join Virgin Media for the first time. The existing pricing structure could still operate for those with high usage requirements, but retain the traffic management tiers that it has now.
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Jut wish VM expanded out past the very dense population areas and into the towns of the UK.
VM ADSL is nothing compared to the cable service they offer and that is why they should expand it's cable infrastructure.
They spouted a week weeks back about how much in Billions they have spent but it's been poorly invested which will give others to bring fibre to the home (very quickly I hope)
Come on VM, come down my street...NOW!
ALL ADSL has been sold in a very bad way - It will only work effectively if it is NOT used at full capacity... pressure selling at an uneconomic price has meant that it has been oversubscribed,(not helped by an over-greedy section of the public!!) and the unrealistic promises and prices have had to be stuck to - so measures have to be taken keep this usage down, to keep some measure of good service!! Just this would be survivable, if not for the totally awful and hopeless way the whole lot has been mis-managed, to say nothing about demoralised BT workers..
VM cable may have similar problems, but they do not have the chain of ISP, BT line, BT workers, BT policies, BT problems, BT standard socket policies, etc.... I think that is why, people are sick of it!!
The problem about VM cable, is it ALL has to be dug, laid, built.. where BT already has the lines, boxes, exchanges, etc, etc... So it will take a LOT of money and time....
What's the BT socket policy and how do VM differ?
Proof an idiot is born every minute
"Posted by drteeth about 14 hours ago
Come on VM, come down my street...NOW!"
Are you a lover of traffic shaping or false advertising?
@Comnut:It's not the fault of ADSL, it's the fault of the ISPs and BTw (perhaps with some 'help' from Ofcom).
Some ADSL providers like BeThere offer a fast service that acts like it's uncontended. I get over 12Mb throughput at any time of the day for £18 a month.
how many of these 54,600 new punters were arbitrarily migrated from AOL ? VM migrated me from AOL in june and after 2 months they still havnt sorted out the account. hardly a seamless experience.
Carpetburn - were YOU born a minute ago?
AndrueC: read carefully... :)
"ADSL has been sold" & "pressure selling" particularly...
As for Be, it has very low numbers at the mo(less than 200,000 it says in ISPreview), so well away from 'saturation' that causes most problems!!
AOL??? I looked around, and it seems if you were once on C&W, NTL cable, whatever, these may have been owned/managed by AOL, and when they sold out to Carphonewarehouse, then Virgin got the cable???
To be fair I would blame AOL for 'leaving your paperwork', it was the same story with old NTL accounts - took months to sort out the mess.. You ARE talking cable, right???
If you still have a NON-VIRGIN cable box, then get it changed - could be the main problem!!
NOTE this is just a GUESS from looking at some forums, I would call virgin and challenge them on it!!
I assume this interest they are talking about is customers who already are locked to cable its not as if they are attracting New customers or am i reading it wrong
Virgin can take a running jump. I am on a housing estate which has cable but as where I live was a newer phase, it does not come to our street but is a stone's throw away. It was originally intended to be delivered back when it was NTL (or Telewest or whatever) but I guess financial problems prevented that. If I email Virgin asking about this and I may have even be prepared to pay to extend it to my house I do not even get the decency of a reply to my email. Even if it does ever come to my street I will not use Virgin as that in my book is extremely bad customer service...
quote"Carpetburn - were YOU born a minute ago?"
Nah i have the sense to go to an ISP that doesnt limit my speed, can in fact DELIVER the UPTO claims, and whos service is not overcrowded in certain areas or need silly washed out celebs to advertise it.
If you are happy with Virgin media and their so called "Fibre" LMAO service though thats all what matters.... You are welcome to it.
"The existing pricing structure could still operate for those with high usage requirements, but retain the traffic management tiers that it has now."
I spotted a typo - the word "tiers" should be replaced with "deceit".