Virgin Media reported increased revenues as continued demand for its superfast broadband compensated for a year-on-year drop in TV subscribers.
TV, internet and telephony all dropped subs – the loss of students traditionally impacts on churn in the second quarter – however, this was lower at 16,800 compared to the 23,500 decline in the previous year.
Across the year internet is up, but both TV and telephony dropped subs.
The February 2014 price rise has helped increase customer revenues by £1.34 to £49.95.
Second quarter revenues reached £1,054 million, an increase of 3%, based on recalculated criteria following the Liberty Global acquisition.
At the same time Virgin commenced a speed upgrade, offering new customers broadband speeds of 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 152 Mbps. The new ‘lower’ tier has led to a redefining of what Virgin calls superfast speeds. The starting point is now 50 Mbps.
This means that at the end of the quarter, 2.1 million, or 47%, of the 4.4 million internet subscribers took superfast speeds, an increase of 424,400 in Q2.
In Q2 over 40% of new internet subscribers took speeds of 100 Mbps or higher.
Despite the fall in overall TV numbers, TiVo remained strong with an increase of 137,800 subscribers in Q2. The next-generation set-top box is now in 2.3 million homes, representing 60% of all television subscribers at quarter end.
