General : Virgin Media adds 30,000 cable customers in last quarter

[Kushan]

Virgin Media has grown to some 4,488,000 broadband customers in total, they actually added 30,000 cable broadband customers in the last quarter, but migrations away from the legacy Virgin Media National ADSL service (lost 16,600 customers) reduced the overall growth level.

The Virgin Media cable network passes some 12,531,500 homes, which means they have the choice of two distinct local loop networks (other option being Openreach), and Virgin Media has some form of billing relationship with 4,892,800 of these households.

The upgrade programme to double peoples connection speeds is still on going and there are now 69% of the cable broadband customers on a 30 Mbps or faster service and amongst new customers signing up 45% are picking a 60 Mbps or faster product.

Sauce: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6...t-quarter.html

So on the whole (and national aside), Virgin are slowly increasing customers. I find it particularly interesting that about 40% of the homes they pass have some form of service. Say what you will about FTTC this and Virgin that, the fact that they're still adding customers must mean they're doing something right.

[Sephiroth]

I hope they are not adding customers to congested areas.

[General Maximus]

Hang on a sec, they added 30,000 cable customers but lost 16,000 adsl customers.....how many cable customers did they lose? I am interested in net growth, for all we know they got 30,000 new bb customers but lost 40,000 to Openreach.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

Hang on a sec, they added 30,000 cable customers but lost 16,000 adsl customers.....how many cable customers did they lose? I am interested in net growth, for all we know they got 30,000 new bb customers but lost 40,000 to Openreach.

The 30,000 Internet Subscriber add is a net add isn't it?

From the Liberty results themselves:

Internet Subscriber is a home, residential multiple dwelling unit or commercial unit that receives internet services over our networks, or that we service through a partner network. Our Internet Subscribers
exclude 152,000 asymmetric digital subscriber line (“ADSL”) subscribers within our U.K. segment

[General Maximus]

It depends which way you want to look at it. It says "added", not gained. You can easily say they added 30,000 customers and lost 40,000

[craigj2k12]

Last quarter covers uni students moving to their new house, so 9 month contracts will have been signed all over the country

[batchain]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

It depends which way you want to look at it. It says "added", not gained. You can easily say they added 30,000 customers and lost 40,000

Cable broadband customers

30th June 2013 - 4,306,400
30th September 2013 - 4,336,600

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

It depends which way you want to look at it. It says "added", not gained. You can easily say they added 30,000 customers and lost 40,000

The bottom row in the PDF (page 23) http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/pre...3-13-Final.pdf says:

Net Adds (Reductions)

So as the figure isn't in brackets it's a Net Addition of 30,000

---------- Post added at 14:58 ---------- Previous post was at 14:55 ----------

BTW it's cable broadband additions we are talking about here

For the customer change it's this one

Customer Relationships are the number of customers who receive at least one of our video, internet or telephony services that we count as Revenue Generating Units (“RGUs”), without regard to which or to how many services they subscribe

Of which VM had a Net Add of 13,500

[Chrysalis]

yep VMs marketing team doing their job, so someone is doing something right.

[Qtx]

My condolences to the 30k that made that terrible mistake!

300 a day isn't bad when you have access to 12.5 million customers.

[Kushan]

It's probably more than 300 a day, the 30,000 is a net gain. For all we know, a million people have left Virgin but a 1,030,000 have signed up.

[kwikbreaks]

It's not necessarily a mistake. My area suffers moderate congestion yet I took a discount and a new 12 month minimum rather than move to fibre. Why? Because imo VM are offering me the most cost effective solution. Note I don't say the best or fastest connection but the most cost effective. Not having to pay a minimum of £10pm for the last mile delivery makes a difference.

I think craig hit the nail on the head with a major source of those new customers. It would be interesting to know what the numbers were at this time last year rather than those from the previous quarter to see the year on year change.

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by Kushan

It's probably more than 300 a day, the 30,000 is a net gain. For all we know, a million people have left Virgin but a 1,030,000 have signed up.

that is what i wanted to know

[qasdfdsaq]

I'm sure they used to publish churn figures in their results, do they not anymore?

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

I'm sure they used to publish churn figures in their results, do they not anymore?

Liberty only publish the variance for their operations - although they do publish 'rgus' of which VM lost 6,800.

However that's not the same as churn I don't think as it could be partial disconnections.

This is in the summary:

Moving to the U.K., we lost 7,000 RGUs at Virgin Media during Q3 2013, which compares to a loss of more than 30,000 RGUs in Q2 2013. Despite aggressive marketing by our competitors during the summer months leading up to the start of the football season, we maintained reasonable video churn levels. Turning to broadband internet, we continue to capitalize on our broadband speed leadership in the U.K. This is reflected in our superfast (30 Mbps or higher) broadband subscriber base, which expanded by 250,000 RGUs in Q3, bringing superfast broadband penetration8 at Virgin Media to almost 70%.