Quote:
Originally Posted by Chad
Latest results show they've lost 19,000 TV customers in UK and Ireland. I think Virgin are the only TV provider in the UK to have virtually no growth, in terms of TV subscription numbers, in the past 5 years. In fact I think Virgin, in the UK, have had about the same numbers of subscribers for nearly 8 years.
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In fairnesss, I think Sky have been losing susbscribers to their satellite platform too but they have more than compensated with their Now TV service. Sky does not split out satellite from Now TV subscribers so this is hard to determine. However, the deals that Sky are offering now seem to show that they need the business.
I think they whole market has shifted over the last few years. The differentiators that cable had over terrestial TV - multiple channels, pay movies, catch-up services, on-demand box sets have been staedily narrowed. If you cancelled cable TV in the past you could lose all these services and just have five channels. With YouView and apps the difference is a lot narrower.
I think VM and Sky will continue to come under attack from the likes of BT and TalkTalk. I think VM's investment in a bigger network is a sensible step forward.