Quote:
Originally Posted by Superblade7
I think you are right Vince. In my opinion I also think VM are now starting to suffer due to lack of content ownership. Sky own much of their content and can afford to advertise half price deals, Sky Atlantic, etc and BT can use BT Sport as a pull to get customers to sign up for their products. Both Sky and BT can also make money from distributing their content online through Now TV and the BT Sport app/website whereas in these days of growing streaming, VM have nothing to offer in terms of content. VM have also lost their big advantage of fibre BB too since the Infinity roll out began.
VM's whole marketing strategy is we've got the fastest broadband and you get 3 tuners on TiVo, free repairs and some other free crap included.
I would hazard a guess that, unless you are a heavy downloader and need the bandwidth, most consumers would be more than happy with a reliable 50Mb connection for general browsing, streaming, etc. Therefore VM need to realise that this continual speed doubling is getting to the stage where very few people will care what the headline speeds are because to the average consumer, they will notice little difference between 100Mb and 300Mb.
So whilst VM will always have a strong offering in the BB market, their TV service is suffering as not only do they lack some content but they are probably the most expensive provider if you choose to take premium content like Sky Sports / Movies.
And regardless of all the above, the number 1 deciding factor for most consumers is price. VM therefore have to be careful not to price themselves out of the market. I notice on the VM website that they've got some pretty decent discounts on their bundles for new customers so I think it will be an interesting few months ahead as Sky and BT are becoming more aggresive and both are / will soon be offering quad-play options too.
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Spot on post. Couldn't have summed it up better myself. It certainly is interesting times. If virgin media do double speed again I may call up and just beg them to spend the engineers time on sorting out the fatal utilisation issues in my area. Sometimes I'm hitting a lovely 110mb. During peak times I'm barely hitting 10mb
I wish they'd sort these problems out first before going for the media grabbing news stories of double speed!
I think if people moved about providers there are a ton of savings to be made out there. But I'm too lazy to leave virgin media unless prices went up extremely. The hassle of switching broadband and tv at once would annoy me. I'm a lazy, lazy man