Topic: NTL

NTL-Telewest Business (yes that is correct) have announced that it has now fully integrated its two main networks.

Speaking on the first anniversary of the combined company, managing director Stephen Beynon said work to being together the two main networks had now finished and this allowed the company to offer businesses an alternative to BT.

The network covers 85 percent of businesses with most of it's connections outside of the 'M25 ring' which they claim is unlike most of it's competitors apart from BT.

He said that so far the company had invested £13bn on it's network and gained £657m of revenue, with half of that coming from IP based sales, up 150% from last year.
Also he gave the reason why the company didn't rename itself to Virgin Media as the rest of the group did earlier this year, "We didn't want to get drowned in the noise" he said.

Pipex have been using The Hoff to promote it's broadband, now NTL are also pining it's hopes on a Hollywood star.

With the start of it's re-branding underway it has snapped up Pulp Fiction star Uma Thurman as part of the £20m marketing campaign to inform consumers of the changes.

The changes which they are hoping customers will notice are those related to NTL's reputation for poor customer service, the telco is keen to to stress that the re-branding is more than just a name change and will instead involve NTL working to improve all operations. These were the very same changes that they were keen to announce after their merger with Telewest, although the company is still seen as one with two-tiers, Telewest still provides the better service and reliability.

Richard Branson has told customers in a letter that the changes are aimed at giving 'the service you deserve'.

NTL:Telewest are conducting trials to limit it's cable customers speed automatically to 5Mbps, in effect halving their speed according to Cable Forum.

At the present this only effects the Swansea area, but has also been tested in Preston, but no details have been released as to whether this will be followed by a nationwide rollout.

Heavy users will see the shaping between 4:00pm and midnight, although the cableco haven't given any details on what conditions will trigger the throttling. They claim that 10 percent of it's customers are using 70 percent of their network capacity, although this figure is common for most ISPs.
The throttling, it's claimed, is justified under clause 4.3 of their Terms & Conditions which allows them to "reduce, suspend or terminate your Internet Services." if customers break their Fair Usage Policy.

Traffic management has become a common bone of contention for ADSL users for a long time but it seems cable customers are having the same problems.

NTL:Telewest, was suffering a national breakdown in it's services yesterday with some users left without any connection.

The problem with it's cable connections started at about 6pm last night and although the cableco hoped to have the problem resolved by 10pm, any business' connections were still unavailable in the morning.

Everything now seems to be running smoothly after NTL:Telewest said was an "issue" in its £13bn network, but promised to give more details about the incident later.

Telewest will be introducing network throttling on its 'unlimited' Blueyonder broadband connections.

Since early November NTL/Telewest customers have been complaining via chatrooms and online forums of bandwidth problems, but until now there has been no response from the ISP.

 Now they admit that they have been restricting traffic for some of it's heavy users, which hasn't gone down very well.

ITV has formally rejected a takeover bid £4.7bn takeover bid by cable operator NTL.

The NTL bid was worth £1.20 for each ITV share, but they were outbid for Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB who took 18 percent of ITV's shares for £1.35 each. This prompted Richard Branson, who is NTL's biggest shareholder to call for Ofcom to investigate.

It seems that NTL can't get enough of merging with other companies, first it was Telewest, then Virgin, and now it's looking to merge with broadcaster ITV.

Talks have been held between the two parties, but ITV call the idea of a merger "highly tentative" with many thinking it is a step too far for NTL. The cableco admits to talks with the troubled broadcaster, but raising the estimated £4.4 billion market price may prove it's downfall as NTL only reported yesterday that its quarterly loss increased to £96 million from £52 million due to the charges need to finance the Telewest and Virgin deals.

Idle talk or serious bid? Watch this space.

Ever since they finally signed the deal back in April, ntl Telewest and Virgin Mobile have been hush hush on their new market name.

Now they have revealed that they will collectively been known as Virgin Media following a re-branding in the first quarter of 2007. Until the re-brand, ntl Telewest will continue to provide services under its existing brand name and Virgin Mobile will continue as part of the new Virgin Media group.

It has also committed an additional £5 million in 2006 to improve customer care for NTL Telewest to being it's customer support to the same levels of that of Virgin Mobile.

Also they have revealed that as well as the trials to provide users with 20Mbps broadband they will be starting further trials to give some lucky customers a 50Mbps service which will start in November 2006.

Well not exactly foreplay, but quadplay, as NTL:Telewest and Virgin Mobile (who are actually one and the same) are offering a launched new package offering broadband, TV, home phone and mobile phone for £40 a month.

The broadband part of the package will offer a 2Mb broadband connection but it will have no download limits and will include the usual firewall, antivirus & modem, digital TV with over 30 channels, a home phone with unlimited weekend calls to any UK landline and a Virgin Mobile SIM card with 300 texts and 300 minutes a month.

Unlimited foreplay may cost you a bit more.....

NTL/Telewest is taking on BT and Sky by giving a free digital TV service to anyone taking its home phone service which starts from £11 per month.

Customers will get Sky One and high definition TV channels along with all of the channels available to Freeview. The deal will include the company's recently launched TV Drive. This is basically the same as the Sky personal video recorder (PVR) and holds up to 80 hours of TV as well as being able to burn programmes to DVD.

This will only be available to around 80 percent of customers in Telewest areas though, but NTL have said it hopes to get the PVR and TV on-demand services will be available to all its customers by the end of the year.