Virgin Media
Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. Since 2013, Virgin Media has been a subsidiary of Liberty Global plc, an international television and telecommunications company. The company was previously listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market and London Stock Exchange. Virgin Media is not a sister company of Virgin Mobile USA, which is owned by Sprint Corporation.
The company was founded in March 2006 by the merger of NTL and Telewest, which created NTL:Telewest. In July 2006, the company purchased Virgin Mobile UK, creating the first "quadruple-play" media company in the United Kingdom, offering television, internet, mobile phone and fixed-line telephone services. In November 2006, the company signed a deal with Sir Richard Branson to licence the Virgin brand for the combined business. All of the company's consumer services were rebranded under the Virgin Media name in February 2007.
Virgin Media owns and operates its own fibre-optic cable network in the United Kingdom, although optical fibre does not reach customer premises, instead going to a nearby street cabinet to provide a fibre to the cabinet service. As of 31 December 2012, it had a total of approximately 4.8 million cable customers, of whom around 3.79 million were supplied with its television services (Virgin TV), around 4.2 million with broadband internet services and around 4.1 million with fixed-line telephony services. At the same date, it had around 3 million mobile telephony customers. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin Media is the sole national cable company in Great Britain and currently covers 51% of UK households. Virgin Media competes primarily in broadband with Sky, BT Group and TalkTalk, and in mobile with EE, O2, Vodafone and Three. In May 2020, Liberty Global owner of Virgin Media and Telefónica owner of O2 reached an agreement to merge their UK businesses subject to approval.
The company's origins lie in both Telewest and NTL, which merged in March 2006.
Telewest began in 1984 in Croydon under the name "Croydon Cable", and was acquired by United Cable of Denver in 1988. The company expanded during the 1990s and adopted the Telewest name in 1992 following the merger of its then-parent TCI and US West. It expanded into cable television access in 1999 by purchasing the remaining 50% stake in Cable London, one of the first cable TV companies in the UK, from NTL, adding 400,000 homes in north London.[8] In April 2000 Telewest merged with Flextech, and in November extended its cable network with the acquisition of Eurobell, taking the total number of homes past 4.9 million.
NTL was established by Barclay Knapp and George Blumenthal in 1993 as "International CableTel", taking advantage of the deregulation of the UK cable market. Initially, Cabletel acquired local cable franchises covering Guildford, Northern Ireland and parts of Central Scotland and South Wales. In 1996 CableTel acquired National Transcommunications Limited (NTL), the privatised UK Independent Broadcasting Authority transmission network. In 1998 CableTel adopted "NTL" as its new name.
NTL purchased the ISP Virgin.net in 2004, having originally operated it as a joint venture with Virgin Group since it launched in November 1996. It sold ADSL broadband services through BT landlines to those living outside areas served by NTL's cable network and also offered subscription-based and subscription-free dial-up Internet access. Prior to acquiring Virgin.net, NTL offered a similar package called NTL Freedom.
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