Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Like the title says,
But i reckon it will be us customers who will win as prices will be slashed as they both compete
This may be exagerating it but who knows they both might go as far as completely making their services free :-)

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Shouldn't think so, as out of last year's Sky revenue of £4 billion, customer revenue was £2.85 billion (annualised average revenue per DTH subscriber for the final quarter of the year was £388, for 8.18 million subscribers).

I can't see them giving up 71% of their revenue stream (especially as they have just announced the possibility of subscription Freeview channels, if that's not an oxymoron).

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

sky can pull there channels from ntl virgin or what ever the crap is called, so why would people want ntl,virgin? since sky channels are VERY popular, and is one of the main reasons we signed up for ntl, so long ago.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Who wants a ugly sky dish outside their property? If you're in rented property then you can't have sky dish without the landlords permission first. You can have cable thou.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

and virgin can pull the channels they have control over from Sky.

Well actually they carnt, they have to try and provide each other the channels at a reasonable cost, which is why they are in negociations at the moment,

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Martyn, Sky are rattled. Threats to "pull" channels shows that they are concerned that now, more than ever, they have a fight on their hands. It may still be ntl / Telewest under the wrapper, but thinga are changing, and changing for the better.

Ultimately though, the winners are the great British public. To quote a phrase from days gone by - "We have never had it so good".

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

heh I think the technical aspect is more important then how my house looks :) besides my dish is on the chimney.

My tenancy agreement forbids sattelite but I had it done anyway, most landlords just turn a blind eye if the rent keeps coming in.

sky are defenitly shaken with the free sky+ coming soon etc.

My sky+ box which was installed yesterday I noticed tho is much less responsive then a standard sky digi box and it occasionally split second freezes like it has no power to process the signal.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

I think there will be a market for both Sky and Virgin Media. Yesterday I saw an interview with Steve Burch from Virgin Media and he gave great weight to the multi offerings. He said that when they launched the 3 for £30 it was laughed at within the industry. Over 40% of Virgins customer base is on triple play and all the others like Sky/BT/Carphone are following. The quad play will give Virgin Media another offering which is bound to be attractive to a lot of people (a single supplier for multi services). We will have to wait and see who actually comes out on top. My money is on none as there seems to be a large sector of the population who will not use any one of the above company's.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

wonder when they will do electric, gas, water, insurace etc etc so i can just pay 1 bill a month.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

God!!!!! imagine what CS would be like.:mad:

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

No worse than thames water, Trust me!!!

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Water. On Demand. :p:

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Its not Virgin vs Sky its Branson vs Murdock ;)

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

of course there is room for both as cable tv is below 50% of the country and seeing as virgin media dont seem to have any plans to fix the anlogue problem taking away the analogue tv areas which are far from competitive its probably below 45%. When they expand over LLU I would be surprised if they can do any type of tv service over it.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Before long its gonna be Sky vs Virgin vs BT Vision vs Freeview vs Sky's DTT vs Homechoice vs Xbox 360 IPTV.

Its gonna get crowded. :)

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

No you can't - you still need their permission.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Who do I think will win, It should be Virgin but it wont be. My reasoning for this is easy has anybody seen any new cables being laid? I moved on to a new estate 8 years ago expecting to sign up with cable as I didnt want a dish on the front of the house. Phoned up the cable provider Sorry cable not available in your area, strange I said we have manhole covers with your name on it, yes but we not put any cable in, when will you be running cable? No idea nothing planned. Still no cable even though 100 yards away the houses on the main road have cable.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Murdoch owns one of the biggest movie studios and TV companies in the US. He's also willing to oudbid anyone for EPL distribution. So, until the U.K. TV audience tires of American fayre I doubt Murdoch or BSKYB are going anywhere.
Eventually satellite will become a misnomer when IPTV becomes a genuine reality. Who wants to pay the massive amounts to a satellite company for limited capacity when you can have virtually unlimited capacity over a network much more economically. Murdoch has seen this and he knows should his empire continue to prosper under his children he had to get into the broadband game now....which is nice.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Last year I read an article by NTL stating they would not lay any new cable due to the cost. Wimax would be the answer to service non cable areas. This week the city pundits are putting forward a tie up with Cable & Wireless to provide Virgin Media services to non cabled areas. I don't think we will have to wait long for the answer.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

All this talk of iptv etc. tho you will find sattelite coverage is pretty good, whilst their broadband goes over a copper local loop which is only decent on 25% of phone lines the rest noisy and long. I would say they probably fine using sattelite for tv and the reasoning for entering the broadband market was nothing to do with iptv but rather so they could offer bundles, if the ancient copper local loop ever gets upgraded to fiber then its a different story.

---------- Post added at 11:34 ---------- Previous post was at 11:31 ----------

At some point someone in the uk is going to have to bite their tongue and invest in fiber, wimax isnt an answer copper certianly isnt an answer, they all far less capable then fiber. For whatever reason it may be noone seems willing to go it with fiber in the uk yet its progressing in other developed countries.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Well here's a link that i posted in another thread. What network does C&W have that is being highlighted in the article. Sounds like Virgin Media are going down the route of buying in external network bandwidth rather investing in its own.



http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle1356266.ece

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

There is a department that deals with this at Virgin Media. It's kinda one of those things (as bad as it sounds) you will need more than yourself that would be willing to change over for them to look into it and HOPEFULLY sort it. It is expensive to lay cables and they therefore need to look at the revenue potential. You need to find out who would be wlling to take the service if it was available and contact customer services with the information.

Have you spoken to a local sales rep - they are generally pretty good at getting these issues sorted.

Do u have a tobby (little black box in the ground outside your house - maybe in the street)

Do you know of anyone in your area that has ntl?

;)

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Nope what they intend using is the old Bulldog DSL network to reach off net customers. That will have nothing to do with on net bandwidth or upgrades

This i think is the bit your on about and is clear what they intend to do.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Bill I take it they not putting equipment in street cabinets so people with crap phone lines are left without hope?

Virgin could have expanded cable to more higher populated areas and especially broadband enable already analogue cable areas and then play on the fact adsl is distance dependant while cable isnt, a big potential there missed I feel.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

I fully agree. I think a quick roll out is what they are after.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Satellite coverage is excellent and for the time being at least is the best medium for TV broadcast, it is however very expensive with limited capacity, albeit not as limited as cable. As bandwidth increases and cost lower, eventually, and I'm not talking in the next couple of years here, satellite will become uneconomical vs IPTV.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Why do you believe that cable is more limited than satelite?

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

AFAIK the current hybrid system that is in use in the UK is limited due to the very nature of the system.

Perhaps Tristan, Bill or someone could point us in the right direction for some info on it? :tu:

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

sky do seem to be more inovative and willing to try new things, i read somewhere this week Sky have just won the rights to the worlds first Origami Championships in Japan. Apparently it is only on paper view though until they recoup some of the initial outlay

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

I've just seen an ad on Sky One asking ntl customers to contact ntl and demand they keep the Sky channels.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

At the moment how many customers do Sky have compared to Virgin?

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Considering it's Sky that are threatening to remove their channels from Ntl/virgin its' rather a cheeky advert.


However as there aren't any programmes that I currently want to watch on any Sky channel it's no loss to me.;)

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

PAPER view??? am I the only person who noticed this? Origami...paper...I'll get me coat.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

No, they won't. The advertising market in this country isn't big enough to make up the losses.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

11million sky and 3million virgin media (I think) - TV customers. it's in today's daily mail.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

How much capacity is there for channels on a long line struggling to provide 1mbit of bandwidth? I think you thinking of IPTV going over decent fiber rather then long copper length.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Regarding the latest news article on the main page:

Something seriously needs to be done to try and stop Sky, this isn't fair, and since Sky One is a major channel airing popular shows such as 24 & Lost, this is getting pretty out of hand.

Even though there are other ways of watching these programs without the need of Sky One, major people don't know or don't have access to this so it may cause some major problems for VM customers who have signed a 12 month contract to be able to watch Sky One.

I found it funny though that Virgin Media are "shocked".

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Strange that you should mention this. See link below.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...3/cnvirg13.xml

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

you are talking good sense mate they know they are in for a rough ride and with branson on board things will definitley change for the better,i am a great advocate of the old saying [your better off with the devil you know than the one you dont know ]:D

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Isn't the question a little too simplistic? It's like saying, who will win; Ford or Vauxhall?

It doesn't really matter who sells more (or perhaps it should be which company loses the least) as long as you're happy with the car. If you want to judge the 'winner' based on turnover or profit, that's fine but not that important to the consumer.

The other simplistic view I've seen on this thread is that the winner will be the consumer. To some extent this might have some bearing, but Sky has always had cable as a competitor, and managed to make significant early gains over them. In most markets there is no price war (at least no prolonged one) and I cannot see one on the horizon in this market either. Realistically it would be Virgin (or perhaps BT or another new extrant) that would have to start it, as Sky are so far ahead in terms of sub figures right now.

The bottom line is that there is space enough for two or more companies in each market without there being a loser.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Simplistic? Competition always improves things for the consumer, and up until now, Sky have had no competition. They have had no competition because ntl's customer service was as rough as a bears' bum so Sky's had to be no better, and the picture quality and range of channels on Sky was better, plus no freezing, al la ntl.

You'll notice the repeated use of the word WAS, however...

All it takes is for one player to raise their game, and the rest have to follow which is a good thing for the end user..to borrow the Ford/Vauxhall analogy, if competition didn't exist, we'd all still be driving around in monstrosities like the Vauxhall Viva.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

I think you're getting confused between evolution and economics :)

Whilst I'd agree that Sky's CS is pretty poor, it is (in my personal experience) not as poor as ntl's. The big difference in my experience is that I never have to call Sky's CS, becuase the product works better. Purely anecdotal, but that's honestly my experience.

So now ntl has a new sign outside the door, but am I really the only person who thinks that a new coat of paint does not change the years of rot inside a couple of rather insipid cable companies, dreadful training, a mele of unconnected systems and management that learned everything on survival of the fittest from the dinosaurs themselves?!?!

VM has the same number of customers this week that the combined ntl:telewest had last week, so what's changed? All the staff? No. All the systems? No. All the management? Not yet, but here's hoping!

Maybe I will be wrong (and actually I hope I am) but I've seen rebrands, mergers, direction changes of cable too many times, and it really didn't get any better and it certainly didn't lead to lower prices.

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

I see you are a fan of Spine Milligna, the well known typing error, so I won't disagree..:)

I agree it would be nice if it changed for the better , but I think there is some serious shaking out still to do.

Oh, and evolution is driven by the need to survive..and so is competition in business!;)

Re: Who Will Win? Sky or Virgin?
 

Sky,Sky lol. There television service is much better.And so is the broadband depending on where you live. I think virgin should think about upgrading speeds, they seem to be falling behind slowly.