Actor Stephen Fry is currently appearing in a Virgin Media TiVo ad
The number of Virgin Media customers that have the TiVo hybrid receiver is expected to top one million in the next few days, the cablenet has said.
Second quarter results saw the TiVo customer base increase by 261,700 to 938,000. At the same time there has been a 37,800 increase in the number of paying TV subscribers, though the actual number of TV subscribers decreased. TiVo is now in a quarter of the TV customer base.
Neil Berkett, chief executive officer, Virgin Media, said: “This has been a quarter of improved revenue and OCF growth. We are well placed to benefit from the fast-growing demand for superfast broadband and TiVo positions us well to lead the evolving TV market. Customer ARPU and churn have improved and, together with our growing Business division and great value mobile offerings, we have maintained steady financial progress across the company which is translating into strong free cash flow as well as continued shareholder returns.”
Revenue was up 3.3% to £2,033 million (€2,609 million) for the half-year and 4.2% to £1,027 million for the quarter.
The second quarter is traditionally one where customer growth might be expected to fall. Virgin was able to cap the figure at 14,700, compared to 36,000 in the same quarter 2011.
15,900 triple-play customers were added in the quarter. Triple-play penetration increased to 64.6% compared to 63.8% a year ago.
Superfast broadband, defined by Virgin as being of 30 Mbps and above increased by 459,800 during the quarter, taking the total to 1.3 million, more than three times the number of a year ago. 590,000 customers were on tiers between 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps. Around 41% of new broadband subscribers took speeds of 60Mb or higher during the quarter.
Virgin is well underway with the upgrade of its network for some four million customers. 22% of the network has received faster speeds since February.
Mobile services are now being promoted to cable homes. By the end of the quarter there were 791,000 cable households with at least one Virgin Mobile contract. Virgin estimates a further 203,000 cable households have at least one prepay phone from the operator.
