First the good news: more people are signing up to Virgin Media’s broadband and mobile phone bundles, helping the company makes its highest number of customers in five years, with an extra 19,000 taken out.
Now the bad: the number of its TV subscribers continued to fall in the UK (and Ireland) down 19,400 in the second quarter. Whilst the broadband service grows the TV service appears to be floundering, with the imminent XL price hike in September likely to further the customer drift to Sky or other services. I'm probably not alone in questioning the value I'm getting for my £119 a month cost, especially as Now TV seems to have sorted out its act and is a viable service at last for a reasonable cost. If the new Now TV full HD box launches this month then I will weigh up my options come the autumn.
Back to the results: the rate of people deserting Virgin Media fell to 14.1 per cent in the second quarter, down from 15.3 per cent a year earlier. Overall VM added another 106,000 customers on a net basis - those joining less those leaving - in the second quarter, giving it a total of 5.02 million UK customers. Overall UK revenues of £2.1billion for the first half of 2015 were reported, up 3.1 per cent on a year earlier.
Sky last month reported an 18 per cent jump in profits and an extra half a million customers in the UK and Ireland over the past year.
7 comments:
I find Virgin media tv a strange beast while the broadband and phone services seem to evolve the tv side of things is looking a bit stale,the tivo service has not changed since its launch(the recent upgrade is very disappointing,i swear i cant tell much difference between the old home page). BT has just launched its new box and 4K service and Sky are promising us a 4K service with High Dynamic Range while still keeping people happy with Sky Atlantic and more HD channels.
I have recently bought a Roku 2 media streamer and now dip regularly into Now TV,their streamed movie service and Sky sports are like you say much improved,recently Sky HD were offering a new TV and introductory offer to switch to Sky although I've been loyal to Virgin for many years i am finding it very tempting indeed....
Do you know if there are definite plans for Now TV to offer 1080p steaming? A review of the new box on TNW suggests that it'll remain at 720p for the time being, although the new hardware could handle 1080p in the future.
No Stephen, I don't. I would fear a price rise if they did take it up a level, and at the moment it's good value and good enough PQ in my book
Tivo was very exciting when it first launched with new things coming on a regular basis. It just seems to have stalled now, and there is no "sizzle" from the service these days.
All of these new STBs look much more exciting than Tivo these days sadly.
Well. The price rise certainly cost them my subscription after 8 years. I strongly object to paying for a sports channel I don't want especially when it is mostly funding overpaid premier league footballers. The virgin guy trying to tell me how lucky I was to get it at such a low price did not help. The final nail in the coffin though was them trying to claim I was on a twelve month contract because 3 months ago I allowed a salesperson to up my package. After much arguing and denial on their part they finally found the notes from the salesperson stating I was to be on a 30 day rolling contract not a 12 month contract for the new service. Only found those notes though after I threatened to go to Ofcom. Found them surprisingly quickly after that
I dropped xl down to m+ don't miss the the loss of channels one bit.
My sister did exactly the same.
And now to add insult to injury they've sent me a revised bill that is £30 more. It transpires that they only cancelled the phone line which made everything go up. They are doing a bang up job of making sure I never EVER come back
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