More than 50 percent of Virgin Media's new customers sign up for 30Mbps or more service, and more than 25 percent of all its subscribers are on 20Mbps, the company said as it reported billion-pound quarterly revenue
More than half of Virgin Media's new subscribers go for the ISP's 'super-fast' broadband products, the company has said.
Virgin Media has reported that more and more subscribrs are signing up for its super-fast broadband products, as it gave its third-quarter results.Image credit: Virgin Media
Announcing a 2.2-percent year-on-year rise in third-quarter revenue
to £1bn, Virgin Media said on Thursday that 54 percent of its new
customers in the quarter chose services promising 30Mbps or
faster. It said "well over half-a-million" broadband subscribers now get these
speeds. In addition, more than a million Virgin customers, or 26 percent of the
company's customer base, are now on 20Mbps or more.
Overall, Virgin Media made a loss of £73.7m for the quarter, whereas it had made a profit of £41.8m in the corresponding quarter of 2010. It said the decline was mainly due to foreign currency losses, reduced income tax benefit and other financial factors.
"Our results show that we're successfully serving what is a rapidly
emerging market for better quality services. The demand for superior
connectivity is accelerating as more people, regardless of their
circumstances, recognise the best digital technology is worth paying
more for," Virgin Media's chief executive Neil Berkett said in a statement.
Broadband speeds
Berkett noted that 187,000 customers are on Virgin's 50Mbps or
100Mbps products, twice as many as a year ago. "We remain on track for
rolling out 100Mbps, the country's fastest widely available broadband
service, right across our network by mid-2012 with over eight million
homes already able to access this super-fast speed," he added.
The demand for superior connectivity is accelerating as more people, regardless of their circumstances, recognise the best digital technology is worth paying more for.
– Neil Berkett, Virgin Media
Virgin Media's 100Mbps service costs £45 a month outside of packages and other offers. It is the fastest broadband package available for residential connections right now, though rival BT has promised to launch its own 110Mbps service in six towns by the end of October. In addition, Virgin Media has begun testing a 1.5Gbps service at Silicon Roundabout in London.
The Virgin Media chief highlighted recent
guidance from the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), which
said ISPs need to stop advertising broadband speeds that cannot be
attained by at least 10 percent of subscribers. Virgin claims its cable service has much less contention than DSL, making it easier to deliver advertised speeds. Contention happens when a provider sells more total bandwidth to its customers than it can provide, relying on consumer under-use to provide a good service overall.
"Virgin Media is committed to leading the industry and only
advertises speeds that at least 90 percent of our customers actually
receive," Berkett said. "By contrast, DSL competitors will have to
change the way they advertise their broadband services, and we think
this will further differentiate our services and highlight the quality
of our broadband to consumers."
The company's results showed more people signing up for
Virgin's TiVo service, which had 222,000 customers as of Wednesday.
According to Virgin, the TV-on-demand service saw 127,000 net adds during the
quarter.
Virgin Mobile saw a slight revenue drop of 1.6 percent, or £141.2m,
which the company blamed on mandated cuts to mobile
termination rates — the amount operator A can charge operator B to
have B's customers call A's customers. However, on the positive side,
Virgin's mobile contract customer base grew by 23 percent
year-on-year, reaching 1.4 million people.
The wholesaling of Virgin's fibre backhaul products appears to be going well,
as shown by its £100m
deal with MBNL.
Virgin Media Business managing director Mark Heraghty said the
company's cloud service launch had "received a great reception from
the analyst community and we're already seeing a positive response
from customers", but he did not give further details.
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