Virgin Media has begun the first quarter of the year with churn reduced to a new monthly low of 1.1% and an improved triple play mix. Total revenues of £935.7 million were slightly down on the £947.3m recorded in the first quarter of 2008, delivering a loss of £104.4 million.
The cablenet added just 7,100 new customers, but a net increase of 148,000 in revenue generating units pushed the number of individual services taken by customers to 12.56 million, reflected in record triple play penetration of 57%.
An additional 47,300 broadband customers were added, though half the 88,400 of Q1 2008, taking the total to 3.73 million. Around 1.4 million customers subscribe to speeds of 10 Mbps and above and 75% of gross new additions took the higher speed.
All 2 Mbps customers are now being upgraded to 10 Mbps as the new 50 Mbps is progressively rolled out across the country.
A net increase of 30,600 took TV customers to 3.65 million. VOD usage continues to rise, up to a monthly average of 55 million views in the first quarter, from 36 million in the first quarter of 2008. The company confirmed the launch of five linear HD channels in the third quarter of the year – Virgin currently has a single high definition channel in BBC HD, though some additional on demand content has recently been added.