[m419]

Hmmm would that explain why the Telewest franchises now have less customers than what they did in 2007,2006 and 2005?

I like the Virgin brand and its companies, however, it didn't help Virgin Megastores in the UK nor Virgin Cola, in fact if you look at the sales and profits of Zavvi Megastores, sales and profit have increased whilst HMV have dipped explaining why HMV are selling additional products like computers and webcams ect.... Regardless of that, both companies have seen profit margines become narrow,usually down to people downloading music off the internet instead and because of the credit crunch.

And Absolute Radio has also ditched the Virgin Brand recently.

However,In Ireland, NTL Ireland is still using the 'NTL' brand and is actually leasing it from Virgin Media Group.

I know that the NTL brand had a slightly bad reputation,between 2001 and 2006, a lot of billing and technical problems occured and because the company was still absorbing the cable companies which it had acquired during the time 1997 and 2000, its customer service and channel lineup was all over the place.

However, Telewest had a much better reputation and its customer services was actually in the top list of UK service providers during 2005 and 2006.

The only real reason NTL probably want to use the brand for is that increases the valuation of the company. NTL has orginally been using the brand since 1996 when Virgin Group and NTL-Cable Tel launched Virgin.Net and then NTL acquired Virgin's 50% stake in 2003 and Virgin Mobile in 2006.

I reckon that if they didn't use the Virgin name, the would have used 'Telewest' 'Blueyonder' or NTL:Telewest or even Eurobell.