A record customer spend has taken Virgin Media’s monthly cable ARPU to £44.81. Announcing its results for the fourth quarter ending December 31, 2009, the UK cablenet said a 3.3% increase in revenues had been driven by a 6.1% growth in consumer cable revenue. Q4 2009 losses narrowed to £94.4 (€107.91) from £244 million in the comparable quarter.
As Virgin announced plans to introduce a 100 Mbps broadband service in the autumn, the cablenet said that 45% more homes were now taking the current mid-tier broadband speed of 20 Mbps compared to a year ago, though it did not provide an actual take-up figure.
“In the fourth quarter, we successfully grew both the size and quality of our customer base. New and existing customers responded to an increasingly differentiated product portfolio and competitively priced bundles by buying more, higher value products,” said Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett. “In a rapidly evolving market, we are also laying the foundations for long-term growth. Despite other operators’ embryonic investment in fibre, Virgin Media’s cable network will, for the foreseeable future, provide an unparalleled platform for delivering successive generations of new and innovative services”.
A total of 228,900 net product additions included 63,600 new cable broadband subscribers, 56,900 new cable TV subs and 112,700 new V+ PVR/HD subscribers. The company has a total of 3,656, 200 cable TV subscribers with just 87,000 analogue homes remaining. Cable broadband goes to 3,837,800 households.
