Virgin Media
Virgin Media Limited is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica. Since its foundation in 2007, the company has used the Virgin branding under license from Richard Branson.
Virgin Media owns and operates its own hybrid fibre-coaxial and fibre to the premises networks. Although most of the network is urban, Nexfibre is expanding the network to more areas. As of year end 2024, it had a total of approximately 5.8 million customers. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin Media is the main cable provider in the UK, with connections available to over 18.4 million homes in 2024. Virgin Media is one of the "big four" internet service providers in the UK along with BT, Sky and TalkTalk. In the past, Virgin Media also operated a mobile virtual network operator and operated TV channels and produced television content.
History
Origins
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. 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, 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.
Merger and Virgin Mobile acquisition
Telewest and NTL began discussions about a merger in late 2003. Thanks to their geographically distinct areas, NTL and Telewest had co-operated previously, as in redirecting potential customers living outside their respective areas. On 3 October 2005, NTL announced a US$16 billion purchase of Telewest, to form one of the largest media companies in the UK. The merger agreement as structured would have required NTL to negotiate with BBC Worldwide due to a change-of-ownership clause written into the agreement for UKTV, a joint venture with Telewest's Flextech content division. To prevent this, Telewest instead acquired NTL.In December 2005 NTL:Telewest and mobile virtual network operator Virgin Mobile UK announced that talks had taken place regarding a merger. Virgin Mobile's independent directors rejected the original bid of £817 million, taking the view that NTL's bid "undervalued the business". Sir Richard Branson reportedly expressed confidence that a restructured deal could go ahead, and in January 2006 NTL increased its offer to £961 million. On 4 April 2006, NTL announced a £962.4 million recommended offer for Virgin Mobile. According to reports, Branson accepted a mix of shares and cash, making him a 10.7% shareholder of the combined company.
NTL and Telewest formally completed their merger on 3 March 2006, making the merged company the UK's largest cable provider, with more than 90% of the market. The combined company renamed itself NTL Incorporated, with ex-NTL shareholders controlling 75% of the stock and ex-Telewest shareholders 25%. Nine of the 11 directors of the new board came from NTL, with two from Telewest.
NTL:Telewest's takeover of Virgin Mobile completed on 4 July 2006, creating the UK's first 'quadruple play' media company, offering television, internet, mobile phone and fixed-line telephone services. The deal included a 30-year exclusive branding agreement
that saw NTL adopt the "Virgin" name after it completed its merger with Telewest. NTL:Telewest announced on 8 November 2006 it would change its name to "Virgin Media Inc".
On 9 November 2006, NTL announced it had approached the commercial television broadcaster ITV plc about a proposed merger, after a similar announcement by ITV. BSkyB effectively blocked the merger on 17 November 2006 by controversially buying a 17.9% stake in ITV plc, a move that attracted anger from NTL shareholder Richard Branson, and an investigation from media and telecoms regulator Ofcom. On 6 December 2006 NTL announced that it had complained to the Office of Fair Trading about BSkyB's move, and would withdraw its attempt to buy ITV plc, stating it did not believe it could make a deal on favourable terms.
Rebrand as Virgin Media
In November 2006, the company signed a deal with Sir Richard Branson to license the Virgin brand for the combined business. NTL Group's services – previously marketed under the NTL, Telewest and Virgin.net brands – were merged with Virgin Mobile under the Virgin Media brand on 8 February 2007. Virgin.net was integrated into the new brand as Virgin Media Beyond Cable.In February 2007, Virgin Central, an on-demand service, gained the rights to begin showing episodes of the television show Lost, and other shows including Alias and The OC. This service extended the on-demand service previously known as Teleport TV; it was later renamed TV Choice, offering recently broadcast shows and other shows and series.
Dispute with Sky
A channel agreement for Virgin Media to keep non-premium Sky channels ended on 1March 2007. As this date approached, Sky ran an advertising campaign promoting popular shows Virgin Media customers would lose and urged impacted customers to contact Virgin Media to get them to return to the negotiating table or switch to Sky. Virgin Media responded via a press campaign, that included a letter signed by Richard Branson and chief executive Steve Burch, with the headline "Sky don't want you to see the whole picture ".The companies failed to resolve their differences, and subsequently Virgin Media replaced the Sky1, Sky2, Sky Travel, Sky Travel Extra, Sky Sports News and Sky News channel content, so these could no longer be viewed by their customers. Sky said the deal would have cost Virgin Media 3p per customer per day, but Virgin Media said that a minimum payment guarantee in the contract meant that the amount due would be more than twice that figure. Sky attributed part of the rate rise to the new deal including Sky3, Sky Arts and undisclosed high definition and video on demand content. The name for the removed Sky News channel was initially changed to "Sky Snooze try BBC", however on 2nd March 2007, Richard Branson requested that to be removed.
Threatened legal action
On 2 March 2007, the National Consumer Council accused Sky and Virgin of "behaving like children" and stated that it would consider whether or not to raise a super-complaint against them "that will help to knock heads together" by the end of that month. On 5 March 2007, Virgin Media threatened to take legal action against BSkyB if the matter remained unresolved in 30days. On 12 April 2007, Virgin Media filed a legal case in the High Court against BSkyB under the UK Competition Act 1998 and Article 82 of the EC Treaty. BSkyB claimed that Virgin Media made little effort to arbitrate. On 9 May 2008, it was reported that Virgin Media and Sky had held talks to resolve the dispute.
Resolution
On 4 November 2008, it was announced that an agreement had been struck for Sky's Basic channels – including Sky1, Sky2, Sky3, Sky News, Sky Sports News, Sky Arts 1, Sky Arts 2, Sky Real Lives and Sky Real Lives 2 – to return to Virgin Media from 13November 2008 until 12 June 2011. In exchange, Sky would provide continued carriage of Virgin Media Television's channels – Living, Livingit, Bravo, Bravo +1, Challenge, Challenge Jackpot and Virgin1 – for the same period. The agreements included fixed annual carriage fees of £30million for the channels, with both suppliers able to secure additional capped payments if their channels met performance-related targets. As part of the agreements, Sky and Virgin Media agreed to end all legal proceedings against each other relating to the carriage of their respective basic channels. In August 2009, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld claims made by Virgin Media in its marketing, in response to a complaint from Sky.
Liberty Global ownership
Until 2013, the company was listed on the U.S.-based NASDAQ Stock Market and the London Stock Exchange. On 5 February 2013, Liberty Global announced that they had agreed to buy Virgin Media for approximately US$23.3 billion in a stock and cash merger. On 15 April, EU regulatory approval for the deal was granted, the final hurdle in the acquisition. On 4 June, shareholders approved the acquisition and the deal was completed on 7 June.On 3 February 2014, Virgin Media acquired Smallworld Fibre, a cable provider based in North West England and Western Scotland, for an undisclosed fee. Smallworld's network was merged into Virgin Media's during 2014.
In November 2014, Virgin Media reached an agreement to sell its ADSL business to TalkTalk Group, allowing Virgin to focus on its cable broadband offering. Virgin began transferring customers to TalkTalk in February 2015.
On 20 July 2018, it was announced that Virgin Media would stop broadcasting all of the UKTV channels from 22 July 2018 over fees and an issue with Virgin's on-demand broadcasting rights. The companies were not able to agree terms to allow the ten channels and their +1 and HD offshoots to continue to be available on the platform and the channels stopped being available at just after midnight on 22 July 2018 with Virgin replacing the UKTV channels on their service with other networks. This led to a backlash by customers with some threatening to leave. The dispute finally ended after three weeks on 11 August 2018 after Virgin Media and UKTV reached an agreement. Virgin Media gradually restored all 10 UKTV channels with their +1 and HD Simulcast channels along with simulcast GOLD HD and the reinstalled UKTV Play app. The app then featured five times the amount of on-demand content. UKTV Channels and the UKTV app were restored to Virgin Media platforms by 15 August 2018.