Virgin CEO interview
 

There is an interesting interview with Tom Mockridge here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...ention-BT.html

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

I foud this part interesting. Does it refers to potentially using BT's ducts and telegraph poles?

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

That has been rumoured for a while now.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Yes of course, back in 2010 it conducted trials. What's interesting is 1) Who's saying it ie the new Chief Executive 2) When he's saying it ie four years later so it's not ruled out.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Will be interesting to see how Virgin can push forward.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

We now have a dedicated new build team in the planning office i work in, and they are getting pretty busy.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

I bet - I'm really excited to see what Virgin can bring in coming months. Theres a tonn of maintenace work going on in the street I live in. 6 VM vans been here for 2 weeks.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Not just BT, we've conducted trials using SSE pylons too.

We've ruled out using the BT fibre TTC, as per everyone else. That project got shelved last year.

There are other ways of extending our reach, we did something on
North Lincolnshire recently.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

What is a shame is the amount of empty ducts and pits lying around, for example just off the Guildford network...

Godalming and Farncombe are covered in pits and ducts, with some going to the front doors of the later builds however neither town is served.

Again Send (near ripley) ducts and pits and not served.

Yet all three areas are no more than 1 mile away from the nearest part of the network... so im not sold on all the costs of expanding the network as alot of the leg work has been done previously... in this example CableTel... just never used...

---------- Post added at 15:20 ---------- Previous post was at 15:18 ----------

This is also true of towns such as Sandhurst and Bagshot all within 1 - 2 miles of the nearest network, with ghost cabs yet not served....

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

I wonder if someone from VM can enlighten us on why this might be so and if this type of situation will be reconsidered?

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Lots of reason why the final connection was never made from wayleave issues, Bridges that we cannot get permission to cross, private roads, the list just goes on and on.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Thanks. Do such situations get revisited?

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

I think the newbuild team are looking at some.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

“You only get revenue by getting customers and keeping customers. We’re not making a choice to wind back on profit to just grab share and nor are we just going to cut our way to profitability.”

Who else thought this was a dig at Sky? He does have a point though because the only way Sky now get new customers is by offering heavy discounts on their products. They have yet again another 50% offer available for new customers and then there's the cheap NowTV offering.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

I didn't see it as a dig at anyone, I saw it as saying that Virgin is not going to get involved in price wars and it is not going to be cutting costs heavily.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

SKY do have these offers every 3 months or so. I joined SKY on one of these deals. Virgin offer half price off for the first 6 months on most packages all year round, plus every second month offer a £100.00 credit on your bill for signing up. Great news for consumers looking for competitive deals. I don't give a flying fig about either companies profitability or how they gain new customers, I'm just bothered about what it costs me at the end of the day. Whoever offers the best deal at the cheapest price gets my custom.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

There's no denying these offers are great for customers but the opening post's link and the thread in general is about Tom talking about the company from a business perspective not the customer and so is my response. VM's half price offers usually only run for a small part of the 18 month contract with Sky's being for the full length. Sky's able to do this because of its size therefore benefitting from economies of scale. But for how long? If I were to join Sky I would certainly never join paying full price knowing how these offers are always around and I'm sure as more Sky customers become aware of these offers I won't be the only one thinking Sky is not worth paying full price for.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Long may the discounts continue :D my pockets are feeling the benefit :D

As you say who cares about the corporate finances they all make enough anyway , power to the consumer.

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Totally agree bud,I have just struck a great deal with sky (even thou it's free till sept) to continue with there TV services to the point that I have been given a free 2tb sky hd box which I self installed this morning and all I have done is took part in some surveys,and with the continued yearly deal off vm I was given it's looking like I will be keeping both services :):) very happy bunny and between the 2 company's a total saving of £95 per month :D

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

Three words BIG BANG SALE , look it up ;)

Some great offers :D

Re: Virgin CEO interview
 

After working on quite abit of the "New Build" work, I can say now that whilst it may look like allot of the ducting and chambers are already in place, there could potentially be quite allot of it that isn't connected.

There are a few areas that I worked on where, everything looked like it would be a simple bit of construction work to connect the final leg of the network to bring close to, 3000 homes on to the network but then when I had it investigated more than what I could do myself it turned out that only 10 of those homes, could actually have been connected up and when it was costed up it was just to high a cost.

There are areas that have got pretty much everything in place but there is issues with people, complaining that we want to put a cabinet in a certain place or that the land owner will not allow us to dig through there land, simply because they may not like Virgin or they don't know yet what they want to do with the land and that, if they did let us go through there land and in the future they wanted us to move the ducting, cables and cabinets etc that it would cost them more than they would be willing to pay.

Until I started in the job I am in I never knew it could cost so much to do the work required but, after doing this job for the last 4 years I now understand why they struggle with the cost's because it is expensive.

The last area that I costed up I think was 300 homes and it came in around £15,000 and that is because, we were not doing allot of the digging but just providing the ducts, chambers and tees but if we had to dig the whole lot then that cost could, quite easily have been over £50,000.

Either way VM do want to get to more places but it's not always easy or cheap enough to just dig and lay the ducting etc.


Good interview though.