Topic: Virgin

Virgin Media has announced it's best quarterly growth for seven years, and said that it should be able to hit 5 million UK customers by the end of the decade.

The telco added a total of 24,000 new customers in the last quarter of 2007, nearly twice as many as the same time the previous year. This brings it's total number of customers to 4.8 million of which 3.7 million also take advantage of their broadband services. Customers who take advantage of more than one service rising from just over 40 per cent last year to just under 50 per cent.

Virgin Media has been suffering email problems since the beginning of this month and have had to call Microsoft in to help.

The bug affects around 10% of it's old Telewest customers and results in emails taking up to 11 hours to arrive. As it's only one of Virgin's total of eight mail clusters which is experiencing problems it seems that the situation has even got the Microsoft scratching their heads, as the only way to resolve the issue is the ever popular fix of rebooting the server.
Virgin hope that its migration to Exchange 2003, which it has sped up, should fix the problems.

Virgin Media is to due to upgrade the connection speed of customers on its 'L' package from 4Mbps up to 10Mbps from the beginning next month.

The free upgrade should be complete by the end of this summer and will be rolled out on a region-by-region basis for all of Virgins cabled areas, which it took over the merger with ntl:Telewest.

The company has also been trialling speeds of 50Mbps and these should be available to nine million homes by the end of this year, although prices haven't been announced as yet.

Virgin Media broadband users are back online again after national network problems on Monday evening.

As is usually the case the problems happened during a firmware update during routine maintenance caused routers to reset, which then cascaded as an excessive number tried to connect at the same time causing IP conflicts.

It seems that most of the problems occurred in the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands with an estimated three million customers having problems. TV and phone services were not affected by the glitch, so it was a case of watching telly rather than surfing for many.

Virgin though seems to have played down the problem.....

Virgin Media has contracted BT Wholesale to manage its telephone switching network in a 5-year £98 million deal.

BT will also look after current support contracts with third-party suppliers on behalf Virgin Media before it's switch to VoIP. It will also mean 184 employees of Virgin being transferred to BT Wholesale for the length of the contract.

Virgin Media's voice switching network supports about a fifth of all landline phones in the UK.

Virgin Media has been rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for the second time in less than a month for making false claims about its broadband service.

The claims were reported to the ASA by, as you would guess, BSkyB who said that the claimed "Superfast" speed could only be achieved in optimal conditions and also members of the public questioned the "unlimited downloads" claim of the advert.

The campaign featured TV, Radio and Internet ads which said that Virgin Media offers "Superfast 10Mb broadband - with unlimited downloads" .The ASA upheld the complaints as Virgin itself admitted that the maximum speeds could not be achieved at peak times, and the telco said that the infamous 'up to' quote had been omitted due to an oversight.

Stay tuned for next weeks Virgin vs Sky advert war.....

Virgin Media is going back to it's ntl:telewest roots after decinding it can't complete with BSkyB.

Acting chief executive Neil Berkett, in charge after the departure of Steve Burch a couple of months ago, has said that the company will forces on broadband rather than trying to take on the satellite provider in the media stakes.

He thinks that rather than providing total broadband TV services customers will be tempted by services such as video on demand that require fast broadband, which can be provided by their cable connections.
Virgin has been trialling broadband with speeds up to 50Mbps which is over twice as fast as BT ADSL2+ and six times the maximum standard ADSL connections can provide. It hopes to provide a similar service to the BBC iPlayer and provide downloadable content, and if it can provide the right kind of content then it will prove to be a winner.

As Mr Berkett says "Despite our technical advantage we are still not really standing out from the crowd,", but it's strange that after it's much hyped move into media it's now decided to do what it did originally and become a broadband cable provider again.

Virgin Media have signed a fifty event deal with M3U.com for secure satellite link to provide near live content including interviews, commentary, and fans’ views.

M3U.com encode and transmit the content over their symmetrical 1024Kbps secure connection from Virgin Media’s new mobile TV studio to Virgin Media’s own internal network. Users can then visit Virgin Media’s sports portal (www.virginmedia.com/sport) on Saturdays to watch the content, although it is archived on the site so it can be streamed for viewing at anytime.

Virgin Media's plan to put off support line callers with a premium line phone rate seems to have worked.

Unluckily for 90 workers at IBM's call centre, who handle Virgins calls, it means that they will no longer have a job. Support was outsource by Virgin in 2006 as a way of cost cutting after the merger of NTL and Telewest.

Whether the reduction is due to less calls due to customers not calling the helpline or just them deciding to hop ship to another provider will tell in time.

Chief executive of Virgin Media, Steve Burch has resigned with immediate effect from today.

Mr Burch led the firm as it was formed by the merger of NTL and Telewest, and through the takeover of Virgin Mobile, but his departure is said to be due to "family and personal reasons" and he will be returning to the US.

Former NTL customers may find they have problems with download speeds on their 20Mbps Virgin Media XL connections.

It seems that while most Virgin customers are not having any problems, ex-NTL customers who are still using Ambit 100 and Ambit 120 modems could end up with speeds of less than 2Mb. This is because of incompatibilities in the old modems which mean they cannot support the new speeds.

So if you an ex-NTL customer and getting slow speeds it might be best to check your modem!

Virgin Media, posted a better than expected second quarter, and had added 51,000 new broadband customers, bringing its total to 3.5 million.

But on the downside it's digital TV side suffered losses of over 70,000 customers which around 40,000 of these were "due to the impact of Sky’s removal of its basic channels from our platform" according to Virgin, but it ewxpecst things to settle in the next few months.

The report also shows that an extra 8.1 per cent of customers take it's triple play bundles which brings this figure to 45.2 per cent of it's users.

Virgin Media have landed in hot water after complaining about rival Sky Broadband.

Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered Virgin not to run the two adverts which appeared in the national press again after they rules they made "misleading" claims.

Virgin had originally complained about a Sky broadband advert, but this dew attention to it's own advert which compared the Sky and Virgin packages. The ASA said these were unfair as Virgin had compared it's 2Mbps service with Sky's 8Mbps and "Because Sky's 2Mbps broadband service was a more comparable service to Virgin's advertised 2Mbps service than Sky's 8Mbps broadband service, the comparison was unfair and likely to mislead," said the ASA.

Virgin also came under fire for claiming that Sky's broadband speeds were dependent on where a customer lived in relation to Sky's unbundled telephone exchanges.

The latest takeover rumours are that Virgin Media has held informal talks with a potential buyer for the telco with figures of £4bn being suggested.

Virgin Media itself only launched earlier this year after a merger of cable providers NTL and Telewest and telecoms firm Virgin Mobile last year, and it's suggested that it's being eyed up by investment bankers.

No doubt more will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

Virgin Media has announced that its technical support helpline will become a premium rate line from 1 July, pushing call costs up to 25p per minute and this includes calls from a Virgin landline.

The problem according to them is that less than half of it's calls are about broadband and it thinks changing to a 0906 number will deter callers. But any user who has the patience to navigate a myriad of menus and then wait for a call to be answered obviously has a problem that needs solving.

The cost of the call for help may deter callers but also could backfire and scare off potential customers, something which broadband comparison site Broadbandchoices highlighted.

Virgin Media has taken increased the number of users who can take advantage of it's services, even if you live outside a cabled area.

It has signed a deal with Cable & Wireless to use the telecos network to provide services via ADSL rather than through cable. This will add 4 million potential new users across the UK, as Virgins cable only reaches around half of the UK population.

Lucky Virgin Media customers could see a doubling of their 10Mbps broadband speeds of up to 20Mbps in the next few months.

Rumours say that May is the date which the cableco will start rolling out the service after undergoing trials in selected areas, but very limited tests of 50Mbps services are likely to whet the appetite further.

Although this will see an extra price increase customers are not likely to complain, a user who pay for Virgin Media's XL broadband package will only see the price rise to £37 per month, so £2 for an extra 10Mbps is a pretty good deal!

Ernie Cormier, chief commercial officer of Virgin Media was obviously taking a swipe at non-cable services, who's speeds are at maximum 24Mbps but generally hover around the 5Mbps mark depending on line quality, said: "Our technology means we can offer an ultra-fast broadband service that our competitors can't match.

Virgin Media have recently confirmed users of the companies top tier of broadband service will be upgraded to a 20Mbps downstream speed.

A fairly limited trial of a 20Mbps service has already undergone testing by the ISP. Currently the max download speed is 10Mbps. Interestingly, the ISP also announced continued trials of a 50Mbps downstream service, although no further details were made available.

BT must be kicking themselves, as it seems they are not the only ones who have access to exclusive US shows such as The Sopranos.

Virgin Media,the recently merged ntl:Telewest company, has signed a key content deal that will bring a number of  HBO television shows to their network.

Virgin Media subscribers will soon be able to view HBO series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Band of Brothers through their Video On Demand (VoD) service.

Customers need to subscribe to the Virgin TV XL package, which costs £31.50 a month, to gain access to the extra content.

Virgin Media, the new name for the combination of the NTL-Telewest and Virgin Mobile companies have leaked details of it's first package.

It has started signing customers to it's VIP, or 'Very Impressive Pack' as it's been dubbed. The package is not cheap, running in at £85 per month, but does come with an impressive line up of a landline package combining of Talk Unlimited, Talk International, and Talk Mobile, the 'XL' size 10Mbps broadband connection and all Sky Sports and Movies channels. The deal according to Virgin would save the customer £37 a month compared with buying each package separately.
A V+ high-definition personal video recorder and a second standard set top box for another room is also included.

NTL:Telewest have given a sneak preview on what life will be like after it's re-branding  under the Virgin banner.

It has launched a site, called Knowfirst, with some basic information of services it will provide, although the exercise seems to be more PR than content driven.

One point which broadband users will notice is that the services of the individual companies (NTL, Telewest & Virgin) will be combined into a single platform comprising of:-

Medium Virgin Broadband, Large Virgin Broadband and XLarge Virgin Broadband which will offer unlimited downloads at speeds of 2, 4 and 10Mbps respectively.  The last two products will also include extra security with PC Guard Total and Broadband Extras (whatever they are) worth £35 a month.

Existing customers will be pleased to hear that email addresses will remain the same, although new Virgin ones will be available.

We must have been sleeping and missed the announcement the other day, but Virgin has launched three new broadband bundles to celebrate its 10th birthday.

The new packages are inclusive of the Home Talk phone service which offers free evening and weekend calls, and a broadband connection.
Prices range from £9.99 to £19.99, with the top package coming with an 8Mbps connection, unlimited download allowance and a wireless router. The £14.99 package is also 8Mbps but is subject to a 6GB monthly allowance, with the lowest package having a 3GB allowance but with a 1Mbps connection speed.

The 'free' broadband wagon keeps on rolling, with Virgin Mobile offering free broadband to people who sign up to one of their phone products.

Users of Virgin Mobile's new pay monthly SIM-only tariffs can get a year's free up to 8Mbps broadband, and free setup and modem to boot.
Monthly tariffs range from £15 (normally £20) to £30 (normally £32) a month, with users not having to sign to a long term contract.

The broadband component is a standard 8Mbps connection with a generous 6GB monthly download allowance.
Customers who choose leave Virgin Mobile before twelve months are up can decide to start paying for their broadband service at £17.99 or drop the service.

The offer is open until 31 October and available from Virgin Mobile Stores, selected Virgin Megastores and online.

Virgin.net, have partnered with NTRglobal to offer its customers an interactive and online UK-based service to remotely diagnose and solve technical problems with their connection.

The service is free to Virgin customers and will allow them to both chat with Technical Support agents online, and then if the wish, allow Virgin to connect to their equipment remotely and solve any problems.

What range of problems with can be fixed hasn't been released, but if customers hare having connection problems, then remotely connecting might be a little hard!

Virgin.net has today announced further improvements to its broadband services. Plan One now, which offers 8Mbps, benefits from an unlimited monthly download allowance and Plan Three download speeds have doubled from 512 Kbps to 1 Mbps. Both services are still available without a 12 (or 18) month contract.

All new customers will benefit from the faster speeds when they join Plan Three and current customers will be offered a free speed upgrade over the coming weeks. Unlimited downloads will take effect on Plan One immediately.

Broadband ISP Virgin.net has signed a partnership with Amazon.co.uk to promote its broadband service on the retail website.

Amazon customers will see Virgin.net Broadband promoted exclusively across parts of Amazon.co.uk and being able to find information on Virgins broadband offers. Users who sign up to one of Virgins three broadband options will be able to receive a £10 Amazon gift certificate.

Virgin.net’s portal site has been voted the UK’s ‘Most Popular Portal Site’ in the 'Website of the Year' survey conducted by MetrixLab.

The survey, which polled over 194,00 internet users, found that it was more popular than competitors such as MSN, Yahoo, 192.com, Up My Street, Yell.com and iVillage.

Wonder where NTL's website came ;)

Virgin Mobile's board has rejected NTL's bid to takeover the company.

The £817m offer was rejected as the board thought that it had undervalued the company, although industry insiders think that this may be a ploy to force NTL to increase the offer, or that other bids may be forthcoming from other sources.

Although Richard Branson owns 72% of Virgin Mobile though his Virgin Group and therefore has the power to make any decisions himself, he has decided to let the rest of the board make it's decision. His representative on the Virgin Mobile board therefore absented himself from the decision to reject NTL's approach.

Virgin is hiking it's download speed on it's Plan Two broadband connections.

All new and existing customers will see speeds rise to 2Mbps, with the price remaining at £17.99 a month. The monthly download allowance is set at 6GB in any given month, users who require more can switch to the Plan One which offers 20GB per month of downloads, but costs £24.99 a month.

Virgin.net have joined BT, Wanadoo and Tiscali by announcing a speed increase at no extra cost to the consumer.

New and existing customers on Virgin's 'Plan One' connection will see their service increased to 2Mbps, but the cost will remain at £24.99 a month. The 20GB monthly cap will remain but so does the absence of a 12 month contract, something most major ISP's require.

Virgin.net has announced a partnership with eBay to promote it's products on the online auction site.

The agreement will see Virgin.net Broadband promoted exclusively across key parts of the eBay site and a specially designed Broadband Information section will provide users with in-depth details about the benefits of using broadband for eBay buyers and sellers.

Anyone who signs up to Virgin.net through the eBay site will be give a £10 PayPal voucher.

Eagle eyed ADSLGuide have noticed subtle changes in the terms and conditions (T&C) of users who sign up to Virgin.net.

Although customers sign for a one month contract, as is becoming the norm these days, Virgin will charge a £50 cancellation fee to those who leave within twelve months of joining.
The reasons for this are quite simple, Virgin defer the cost of the free modem and free connection working on the business model over a twelve month minimum term, in effect users who join then leave soon afterwards cost them money!

As migration between suppliers becomes easier the days of free activation combined with short contracts seem to be nearly past, unless there are 'claw back' clauses to recompense ISP's.

Virgin.net has today dropped the cost of its 512Kbps broadband servic, staring at £14.99 a month. This offer applies to all new and existing customers, and comes into effect as of today.

New users can take advantage of free activation and a free modem, Virgin.net state that it will not to tie its customers into a 12-month contract, although it's not obvious what the contract length is...hopefully not 11 months!!

Late last month Virgin.net announced a revamp of their ADSL services. Some two weeks later, and we note that the ISP has quietly altered its offerings a bit - the most prevalent being the introduction of a 1Mbps service and the increase in download allowance of the ISPs "Plan Two" & "Plan Three" products. In all 3 "Plans", there's no pricing changes (see table below).

The changes are, 1Mbps introduced on "Plan One" only, costing £24.99, and maintaining its existing 20GB download allowance. Plan's Two and Three, are only available with 512Kbps, but see an increase in their download allowance to 6GB and 3GB respectively (up from 3GB and 1GB).

We understand that new customers to Virgin can request a 1Mbps service straight away, whilst existing 512Kbps users can be migrated at some point next week.

Virgin.net have this week announced a revamp of their consumer aimed ADSL services, offering 512Kbps service from £15.99 (inc VAT).

Owned by NTL, Virgin.net have the philosophy of offering any broadband speed you like - along as its 512Kbps, much alike the proverbially similar and aged Ford choice ("any colour as long as its black", for those too young to remember).

In all 3 cases, there's just a 1 month rolling contract and free activation. Virgin.net also include (the now pretty obligatory) free modem as well.

It seems to be the free activation season! After Eclipse announce their offer, Virgin announce that it is going to offer free activation and modem to new customers.
For those who sign up by the 31st March there is an added bonus of the chance of a Caribbean holiday for four people worth £5000.

Virgin.net offers two packages, both offering 512Kbps speeds, Plan 2 which is unlimited, and Plan 1 with a 3GB monthly download limit, although additional  usage can be bought for £2 per GB.
The packages cost £17.99 and £24.99 respectively, with full details at Virgin.net.

Long time provider to Virgin.net, NTL, has finally acquired the remaining 51% of shares in the ISP meaning Virgin is now wholly owned by the cable co, according to the PCPro website today.

According to a statement by NTL on the acquisition, its going to be "business as usual" at Virgin - with existing management staying put. The 600,000 or so Virgin.net punters should (allegedly) also not be affected by the purchase.

NTL are traditionally a cable DSL provider and Virgin.net, ADSL focused, so this news clearly shows NTL ambitions in the ADSL market - in addition to their network expansion costing around £65million.

Virgin have announced that they are doing the opposite to Tiscali, and offering a new capped service.

Earlier this week Tiscali pulled the plug on it's capped service stating that it's customers prefer uncapped ADSL, Virgin seems to think differently.

The package is a pretty standard 512k service, with no activation charges, free anti-spam and email virus protection. The website says that there is no 12 month contract, but it doesn't state exactly how long the contract period is.
Called 'Virgin.net Broadband Plan Two' it will cost £17.99 per month and has a generous 3GB cap, although there will be no provision for those who exceed this. This will run along side it's existing 512Kbps uncapped £24.99 service, now called Plan One.

Details are at the Virgin website.

As reported last week, Virgin.net have re-opened the doors, accepting orders for their Broadband service, following the ISPs decision to prevent new customer registrations until network congestion issues were back to an acceptable level.

The ISP, which back in November 2003, forwarned its users of a possible impending download cap, have taken a number of steps to resolve a series of issues.

The ISP has increased both its network capacity, with further enhancements expected towards the end of the month. Also nearly 90 extra customer support staff have been engaged to deal with customer queries.

Finally, Virgin have, to quote their announcement "Successfully requested that customers using the service to excess reduce their usage significantly", which one can only assume to mean that users of the ISP who have been using their broadband connection to the fullest, have been warned as per our previous story.

With broadband becoming an instant hit for many ISPs, the capping of services is becoming a bit of a buzz word these days (ref BT Yahoo's recent revelation). Whist network integrity has to be one of an ISPs main concerns - one has to fear that the days of "download all you like" internet connections might be a distant memory for us all.

Virgin.net is still struggling to restore its broadband service and allow new customers to sign up to it's services.

As we reported back in November Virgin halted new subscriptions and imposed a usage cap due to a deterioration in service.
At the time, Virgin said new registrations would resume in the New Year but it is only now preparing to accept just a few new broadband customers.

Virgin claims the service, speed and email performance of the network is now back to previous levels, but it is opening up its broadband network in three stages and checking service quality at each stage to prevent a deterioration in service.

The rumours are that Virgin is more than dissatisfied with the service it is receiving from it's network provider NTL. Virgin only actually controls it's sales and the support, the infrastructure is provided by NTL, although it is thought that Virgin is trying to take back control of as many operations as possible.

This is understandable as it is understood that the original collapse in Virgin.net's broadband services came after problems with the NTL network. But no-one will confirm or deny this rumour.

The good news for Virgin.net customers is that it has lifted it 1GB per day download restriction deployed at the start of December.

A number of broadband subscribers of ISP Virgin.net have recieved a stark warning about their historical usage of the service.

The ISP which charges around £25 (inc VAT) for its 512k ADSL service released the following announcement to a selected quantity of its subscribers.

Virgin.net have further clarified this announcement with the following release.

The announcement from Virgin.net mentions the collection of email and surfing websites, but nothing of other popular applications, such as Peer2Peer usage, VPN and audio / video streaming, which subscribers are fast considering to be the norm.

Following on from pressure lobbying groups such as as the now defunct Campaign for Unmetered Telecomunications, <a href="http://www.anticap.co.uk/" target="_blank"">Anticap has been established following the first public case of mass capping from Cable broadband provider NTL.

The theory of bandwidth capping is something of a sore point given the current market appetite for broadband connections. With sales pitches from ISPs either implying or quoting unlimited usage of their service, chronological capping of subscribers bandwidth is one 'service' that many subscribers would greet by voting with their feet and assisting in the increase of the ISPs churn rate. But for how long ? With bandwidth usaging become more of a valued commodity in the ISP market than it ever has before, are we likely to see more ISPs adopt this strategy, under the claim of network integrity? What is clear, is that there will always been two sides to the coin with low usage users or "bursty" users citing that network integrity is key to any decent service from ISPs. The other side of the coin will cite that their monthly subscription permits them to use their service how they like.

Middlesex based Metronet currently operates an "open policy" capping service in a attempt to attract subsribers to their service who want the benefits of a broadband connection - but who deem themselves to have little requirement for vast amounts of download capacity. Prices for Metronet start at £10 per month (plus VAT) for their 512k ADSL package for which includes 200MB of data download a month with subsequent MB's charged at £0.0025 per MB (2.5 pence per 10MB).