Broadband News

Virgin Media: “Modern families need superfast broadband”

Monday 13 February, 2012

By Anthony Hill

Chief executive Neil Berkett says households rarely sit down together - and their separate activities make fast connections a must.

Virgin Media has said that changing habits in the family home are driving demand for superfast broadband. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, chief executive Neil Berkett said the joys of cuddling up on the sofa are nowadays just about gone.

With the rise of on-demand services - like the BBC's iPlayer, Virgin media's TiVo or the recently launched film streaming website Netflix - families no longer need to huddle around one screen to enjoy TV or cinema at home.

"It’s a bit sad really. The family doesn’t sit down together at five o’clock on a Sunday anymore," he told the newspaper. "Somebody’s already watched it, somebody’s recorded it, somebody ... doesn't have to watch it at the moment, or they’re watching it upstairs on their tablet."

Rather than talk about programmes with the person sat next to them, viewers now discuss shows online, with social media like Facebook and Twitter. Berkett said he believes this trend will continue over the next five year, accelerating as fast broadband becomes increasingly available.

He added: "You won’t sit next to the other person watching, but you will talk to them about it in exactly the same way. The group experience has become replaced by virtual experience, and the world will go faster and faster and faster."

Delivering this experience to Virgin Media's customers is video-on-demand service TiVo, which effectively guesses what you want to watch based on your previous choices. The platform more than doubled its users to 435,000 in the last three months of 2011.

The service requires Virgin Media broadband and as the family becomes more independent, superfast connections are quickly becoming the norm. These provide much greater download speeds, allowing several online activities to run side by side.

In January, Virgin Media announced it would soon be improving its broadband services, doubling the speeds of over four million customers and boosting its top speed to 120Mb. The upgrade programme starts this month and is expected to be complete by mid-2013.