Advanced Television

Virgin Media adds 11,000 TV subs

October 23, 2012

The iconic advertising campaign featuring Olympic gold medallists Mo Farah and Usain Bolt helped Virgin Media boost the number of new cable customers.

Virgin said it added 39,500 customers in the three months to end-September, compared with 6,300 for the same quarter last year. Revenue was up 2.8 per cent to £1.03 billion (€1.27bn) for the three months.

It said the percentage of people dropping the service during the quarter fell from 1.7 per cent to 1.4 per cent. The lower churn rate was attributed to improved broadband speeds and the popularity of its TiVo digital service.

The number of customers subscribing to Virgin ‘s TiVo box, a competitor to the recently launched YouView, rose 205,900 to 1.14 million. TiVo customers now represent 30 per cent of the total TV customer base.

Neil Berkett, chief executive, said: “This has been a quarter where continued strong demand for superfast broadband and TiVo has led to lower churn and meaningful cable customer growth… Combined with progress in our business division, we have again delivered solid financial progress.”

The number of customers taking its broadband speeds of 30mb or more increased by 452,900 to 1.8 million – or 42 per cent of its total base. More than 40 per cent of new broadband customers chose speeds of 60MB or faster, the company said.

The group grew its TV subscriber base by 10,700, which was up on the same period last year when the company lost TV customers. The total number of TV customers stood at 3.78 million at the end of the quarter.

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