[brundles]

A company being a new legal entity has absolutely no bearing on the reality of the companies day to day operations. On paper it's a new company, but it's controlled by NTL and still run by NTL.

I'm not suggesting that things haven't gone down hill (IMO they have) since they got their Virgin badge, but it is still NTL.

I'm not sure about your other comment on the monopolies and mergers stuff - the BT infrastructure was paid for with tax payers money but now provides income to BT as they re-sell to those other providers. That wouldn't exactly be level for cable opening their network would it as they paid for it themselves. Besides, if they did, we'd probably see greater STM levels or similar as they try and reserve bandwidth for those other companies who (will probably) have tied VM down with penalties if certain service levels aren't met.

(Mind you, perhaps that could be a good thing as it could force VM to review their infrastructure whilst giving them a source of funding to do it with.)

(I think we might be getting slightly OT now though