Virgin to be sold?

[injuneer]

I wouldn't think C&W would be interested as in recent years they have been busy divesting themselves of small & medium businesses in favour of large corporate contracts.

[Arthurgray50@blu]

If VM was to be sold, it would not be a bad idea, even if it did have ' Murdoch' if Sky bought it, look at what it would achieve, You would get all the Sky channels back, all the people that live in places that cannot have a dish would benefit, and it would be cheaper, What would make it even funnier, is if Sky had RB as its main director

[webcrawler2050]

C&W wont buy it they sold Bulldog because they couldn't make any money out of it!

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

If VM was to be sold, it would not be a bad idea, even if it did have ' Murdoch' if Sky bought it, look at what it would achieve, You would get all the Sky channels back, all the people that live in places that cannot have a dish would benefit, and it would be cheaper, What would make it even funnier, is if Sky had RB as its main director

*if* Sky bought the VM cable service (which, afaik, is *not* for sale or even being valued), they would have an effective monopoly on Pay TV. Now, assuming that the Competition commission don't intervene (which they would probably be required to), Sky wouldn't lower prices. Why would they? They'd have no competition.

On the contrary, I think you would find their prices going up massively.

---------- Post added at 20:04 ---------- Previous post was at 19:57 ----------

Originally Posted by m419

Cable and Wireless: Would allow the company to retrieve back a residential and small business customer base and would be able to offer Cable internet to its existing business customers. Cable and Wireless would definately continue to use existing Virgin and NTL:Telewest business brands and thats what Virgin Enterprises want! Although France Telecom are after Cable and Wireless, so if Cable and Wireless did acquire Virgin Media and France Telecom acquires Cable and Wireless, then we would probably see everything be rebranded to Orange! How does Orange Media sound???

Orange media sounds absolutely awful. Everyone I know who has had Orange Broadband or an Orange Mobile has had problems..

As for C&W showing an interest? Based upon the past, I wouldn't expect any interest they show lasting long.. They already bought a lot of cable companies in 1999, which they had disposed off by 2003-2004. Then, they bought Bulldog, kept the network and sold off everything apart from the network. Bulldog is still trading, but it is as a unit of Pipex, which is part of Tiscali.

[Chrysalis]

Stuart they would have a monopoly but the funny thing is he is right, the consumer would gain. Competition isnt the be all and end all like ofcom thinks it is. Competition certianly is a driver for pushing prices down and hindering investment, all those complaining about STM you can thank competition for that.

[SMHarman]

This valuation / sale is all about
http://www.virginmediatv.co.uk/
not
http://www.virginmedia.com/
http://www.virginmedia.com/about/
http://investors.virginmedia.com/pho...485&p=irol-faq
Virgin Media Inc. is a Delaware corporation and is publicly-traded in the US on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol "VMED".

Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels - LIVINGtv, LIVINGtv 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge, Trouble and Ftn - and is a 50% partner in UKTV which consists of ten channels including UKTV Gold and UKTV History. sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auctiontv.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Stuart they would have a monopoly but the funny thing is he is right, the consumer would gain. Competition isnt the be all and end all like ofcom thinks it is. Competition certianly is a driver for pushing prices down and hindering investment, all those complaining about STM you can thank competition for that.

Prices tend to go up when competition dies. Innovation (in terms of new products and services) goes down, because to a large extent, that innovation is created by the need to win customers.

Want proof? How much did BT innovate (in terms of new services) and how much did they lower prices between the time they were privatised and the time competition established itself?

You really think Sky would have lowered prices if they *hadn't* had competition from both Cable and OnDigital?

While conditions for Consumers would probably not get any worse, they would not get better either.

I am not saying that competition is the be all and end all. It isn't. It has resulted in artificially low broadband prices (it actually costs more for the ISPs to provide their faster tarrifs than they charge). This has caused ISPs to cut investment in their networks to the minimum, introduce measures like STM, and look at alternate revenue streams, such as music/video downloads and Phorm.

What I am saying is that without competition, you do not generally get innovation. Say Sky did become the only pay TV provider in the country. Everyone who wanted Pay TV would have to go to them anyway, so why would they spend money developing new facilities on their boxes (such as the Press Green to record on ads, and remote recording from mobiles)?

[Stu038]

Originally Posted by m419

Also UK based calls are often routed over networks such C&W and these extra charges would no longer happen as everything would be treated as in-house.

Sorry mate but it doesn't work that way, those networks still have to be maintained, monitored and fixed, and to be honest the savings that are made by a rationalisation of the workforce (a posh way of saying that your making some poor bugger redundant) are negligible when you start to try to parcel it out against the millions of phone calls made every day.

Those sort of savings never get fed back directly to customers, they go into reducing operational expenditure which means that companies don't have to borrow as much money to run the services, that means less interest payments which in turn means higher dividends for the share holders.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

This valuation / sale is all about
http://www.virginmediatv.co.uk/
not
http://www.virginmedia.com/
http://www.virginmedia.com/about/
http://investors.virginmedia.com/pho...485&p=irol-faq
Virgin Media Inc. is a Delaware corporation and is publicly-traded in the US on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol "VMED".

Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels - LIVINGtv, LIVINGtv 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge, Trouble and Ftn - and is a 50% partner in UKTV which consists of ten channels including UKTV Gold and UKTV History. sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auctiontv.

Must be in fashion this week
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080430...r_080430192248
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/bu...arner-web.html

Time Warner Spinning Off Cable Unit
By TIM ARANGO
Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, continued to trim what has for years been the world’s largest media company by announcing Wednesday that it would completely spin off its cable company.

The news � which was not unexpected and follows an earlier transaction in which a portion of the cable unit was spun off into a separate public company � came as Time Warner reported quarterly earnings that were largely in line with Wall Street’s expectations.

“We’ve decided that a complete structural separation of Time Warner Cable, under the right circumstances, is in the best interests of both companies’ shareholders,� Mr. Bewkes said Wednesday in a statement. “We’re working hard on an agreement with Time Warner Cable, which we expect to finalize soon.�

Separating content from distribution

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Prices tend to go up when competition dies. Innovation (in terms of new products and services) goes down, because to a large extent, that innovation is created by the need to win customers.

Want proof? How much did BT innovate (in terms of new services) and how much did they lower prices between the time they were privatised and the time competition established itself?

You really think Sky would have lowered prices if they *hadn't* had competition from both Cable and OnDigital?

While conditions for Consumers would probably not get any worse, they would not get better either.

I am not saying that competition is the be all and end all. It isn't. It has resulted in artificially low broadband prices (it actually costs more for the ISPs to provide their faster tarrifs than they charge). This has caused ISPs to cut investment in their networks to the minimum, introduce measures like STM, and look at alternate revenue streams, such as music/video downloads and Phorm.

What I am saying is that without competition, you do not generally get innovation. Say Sky did become the only pay TV provider in the country. Everyone who wanted Pay TV would have to go to them anyway, so why would they spend money developing new facilities on their boxes (such as the Press Green to record on ads, and remote recording from mobiles)?

Yes I said prices going down is about the only benefit of competition, but I think lower prices are not always a good thing.

BT is a good example. Prior to been broken up by ofcom one could get a engineer callout for broadband fault with relative ease, prior to the wholesale pricing changes enforced by ofcom traffic shaping wasn't in existance or at least not on such a large scale, BT have effectively gone on record saying one of the prime reasons for a lack of FTTH rollout is the fact they would be forced to unbundle it to competitors (I dont often defend BT but they are in the right here).

Now moving on to tv. Sky have a good track record of investment, they spend billions on premiership football coverage and its the best in the country. Then regulation forces the premiership football rights to be fragmented and whats the result? Higher prices for the consumer as they forced to pay for setanta to get their prem plus games back and setantas coverage is poor in comparison. If the paytv market was broken up by breaking up sky the only winners are sky's competitors but not the consumers. Look at ofcoms regulation history they there to benefit who they regulate and make a competitve market often at damage to the consumer. This is because they often over regulate.

Ofcom are almost certianly stifling investment, a over competitive market is not a good place to invest. A market with low retail pricing is not a good place to invest as there is no ROI.

[m419]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

*if* Sky bought the VM cable service (which, afaik, is *not* for sale or even being valued), they would have an effective monopoly on Pay TV. Now, assuming that the Competition commission don't intervene (which they would probably be required to), Sky wouldn't lower prices. Why would they? They'd have no competition.

On the contrary, I think you would find their prices going up massively.

---------- Post added at 20:04 ---------- Previous post was at 19:57 ----------



Orange media sounds absolutely awful. Everyone I know who has had Orange Broadband or an Orange Mobile has had problems..

As for C&W showing an interest? Based upon the past, I wouldn't expect any interest they show lasting long.. They already bought a lot of cable companies in 1999, which they had disposed off by 2003-2004. Then, they bought Bulldog, kept the network and sold off everything apart from the network. Bulldog is still trading, but it is as a unit of Pipex, which is part of Tiscali.

Cable and Wireless acquired Nynex,Videotron and Bellcable media in 1997 and also merged Mercury which it already owned into Cable and Wireless Communications, thats why Mercury One2one recieved new branding.

In 1999 Cable and Wireless experienced a few financial problems and sold of its 50% share of one2one to Deutsche Telekom, US West also sold theres to Deutsche Telekom too meaning one2one was a wholly owned Deutsche Telekom firm.

Cable and Wireless then planned to acquire Telewest Communications and if not sell all of its cable franchises. NTL was the lucky one and they acquired all of Cable and Wireless's and BT's cable franchises. ITV also had to dispose of Diamond Cable due to a competition issue and NTL also recieved that.

Bulldog Comms was sold off because there was a lot of problems with upgrading its network, they expanded to fast and most customers had no service even though they paid upfront,there was also a problem with the billing system too. Bulldog was ordered to pay its customers back and this is a long process. Therefore Cable and Wireless again experienced financial issues and sold its customer base although according to the register, Cable and Wireless are selling directly to a few ex-bulldog customers. Cable and Wireless also planned on disposing some of its low revenue generating business customers too but disposed of many workers.

Recently, Cable and Wireless, rebranded there channel island operations and have now launched in the Isle of man selling to all sectors. Its called ''Sure'' .

So whos what they will do!

[spankysmagicpian]

If the VM TV channels were bought by Sky then they should make a condition of the sale the return of the SKY basic channels plus whatever else they can eke out of them

[Arthurgray50@blu]

The biggest issue, concerning any prospective sale of VM channels, to Sky for £600. million is NOT the pay TV market, it is for the consumer, you and me, for a long time now, we have had the issue of where, VM took off the bonus package of Sky, which affected everyone, especially myself, l much prefer Sky News, to BBC24, which is totally crap, the issue of SSNews, which we also lost, this will benefit the customer, please remember, we have customers in flats that cannot have dishes, we also have places that cannot have dishes, due to landlords, that don't want ugly dishes on the walls, we have a block of flat in West London, that is riddled with dishes, which makes the block unsightley, NO it is not the residents fault, they want television, from whatever source they get it, It has been widely known, that VM want to expand the broadband service they provide, so therefore, this would be the perfect way of getting round it, and don't forget, all the technology that Sky has, you won't get those, pictures that break up - l think it is a brilliant idea.

[Chrysalis]

I find it amusing when people say sat dishes make it unsightly, most buildings are ugly in themselves a dish isnt going to make much difference.

[Mick Fisher]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

I find it amusing when people say sat dishes make it unsightly, most buildings are ugly in themselves a dish isnt going to make much difference.

Me too.