Broadband News

Virgin Media adds 88,000 broadband customers

Garnet Roach garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

The UK’s cable operator added 88,400 broadband customers in the first quarter of 2008 to top 3.781 million subscribers (08-05-08).

Virgin Media (www.VirginMedia.com) announced last year that it would focus on its broadband service in the face of strong competition from Sky Broadband (www.Sky.com) over digital TV.

It reiterated this commitment, saying: “Our strategic priorities are to lead the next generation broadband market in speed and quality and to redefine the mid-market TV experience through on-demand. With respect to broadband, our 4Mb to 10Mb upgrade program is underway and we plan to launch 50Mb later this year.”

But despite a reduced focus on digital TV, Virgin Media has begun heavily advertising its TV-on-demand offerings, and recently became the first TV platform to offer the popular BBC iPlayer.

“We have also significantly enhanced our TV offering with the launch of BBC iPlayer. Both subscriber growth and VOD usage remain strong,” it said.

Although it didn’t give specific figures, Virgin Media announced that “the percentage of customers on our top 20Mb tier continues to grow” ahead of its 50Mb launch later this year.

It also announced that it would be removing all call charges on its broadband technical support lines in June - a point that all customers will appreciate since the company applied a premium rate cost of 25p per minute to its technical support line in June last year.

However, although Virgin Media continued to perform well in its cable broadband - reducing overall churn and adding customers in a difficult consumer environment - Virgin’s ADSL service actually saw a drop of 7,800 - from 287,300 customers at the end of 2007, to 279,500 at the end of March 2008.

Michael Phillips, BroadbandChoices.co.uk product director, said: “Virgin Media has really pulled itself back up after the debacle over Sky’s premium channels last year.

“Its broadband consistently performs better than the vast majority of its ADSL competitors and it has really boosted its on-demand TV service with the launch of the BBC iPlayer on its platform - which means that users can now catch up on their favourite BBC shows without affecting their fair usage policy.

“The decision to remove the premium rate charge from its technical support line will also prove very popular with existing customers,” he added.

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