scoobystu2
11-05-2007, 07:53 AM
· Company braced to lose more customers
· Defections already severe from phone competition
Virgin Media lost nearly 47,000 customers in the first three months of this year and warned yesterday that more were likely to follow after the decision by BSkyB to pull channels including Sky One from the Virgin service two months ago.
The cable TV company, in which Sir Richard Branson's empire has a major stake, suffered an exodus of telephone customers in the first quarter of the year, in the face of fierce competition from services such as Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk with its "free" broadband offer. Now Virgin Media faces the departure of thousands of disgruntled TV subscribers after its bitter rival Sky stopped providing cable households with basic Sky channels on March 1.
Steve Burch, Virgin Media chief executive, admitted that in the first week after Sky's decision, Virgin Media received 137,000 calls from unhappy customers. While that had dropped to 2,000 calls by mid-April, the company is braced for defections. Customers are locked into a 30-day notice period so any cancellations will not be registered until there are figures for the quarter to the end of June.
"Virtually all of the Sky impact that we are going to have in terms of disconnects is going to show up in the second quarter rather than the first quarter," he said.
In the three months to the end of March Virgin Media added a net 75,200 TV customers. That was less than the 83,900 added in the previous quarter, suggesting growth slowed as the quarter wore on and it became clear viewers would be unable to watch hit shows such as Lost, 24 and Battlestar Galactica. "If there was any impact [of the Sky move] at all, it was on gross additions that we thought could have been higher were it not for all the noise from Sky," said Mr Burch.
cont.
ref,
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2076131,00.html
· Defections already severe from phone competition
Virgin Media lost nearly 47,000 customers in the first three months of this year and warned yesterday that more were likely to follow after the decision by BSkyB to pull channels including Sky One from the Virgin service two months ago.
The cable TV company, in which Sir Richard Branson's empire has a major stake, suffered an exodus of telephone customers in the first quarter of the year, in the face of fierce competition from services such as Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk with its "free" broadband offer. Now Virgin Media faces the departure of thousands of disgruntled TV subscribers after its bitter rival Sky stopped providing cable households with basic Sky channels on March 1.
Steve Burch, Virgin Media chief executive, admitted that in the first week after Sky's decision, Virgin Media received 137,000 calls from unhappy customers. While that had dropped to 2,000 calls by mid-April, the company is braced for defections. Customers are locked into a 30-day notice period so any cancellations will not be registered until there are figures for the quarter to the end of June.
"Virtually all of the Sky impact that we are going to have in terms of disconnects is going to show up in the second quarter rather than the first quarter," he said.
In the three months to the end of March Virgin Media added a net 75,200 TV customers. That was less than the 83,900 added in the previous quarter, suggesting growth slowed as the quarter wore on and it became clear viewers would be unable to watch hit shows such as Lost, 24 and Battlestar Galactica. "If there was any impact [of the Sky move] at all, it was on gross additions that we thought could have been higher were it not for all the noise from Sky," said Mr Burch.
cont.
ref,
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2076131,00.html