Virgin Media has finally arrived, in a blizzard of press interest that has been building in momentum ever since the much-publicised merger with Virgin.net and ntl:Telewest last year. Virgin Media has caused a stir, upping their game in a flamboyant style that is typical of Richard Branson, who was seen hobnobbing with celebrities such as Uma Thurman (who also stars in Virgin Media’s central ad campaign) and Dita von Teese, and playing on a Nintendo Wii with reporters inside a perspex Big Brother-style cube in Covent Garden.
Virgin has set out its stall against rivals in a packed market space, gamely squaring up to both BTand Sky, scrapping for a share. Virgin Media poses a serious threat to both these companies as it’s competing on a variety of platforms, and offers something to customers that neither of these competitors has; Sky does not support a mobile phone network, and BT’s IPTV service, BT Vision, launched last year has yet to introduce the full range of its promised channels, particularly the sports section, and lacks the support of an established mobile phone network for its Fusion VoIP phones.
As such, Virgin is keen to emphasise its ‘quadplay’ services of digital TV, Broadband, mobile and home phone, a package of which is currently on offer for £40 a month, and is also offering basic digital TV services gratis when taken with a Virgin Phone deal.
In Branson’s own words, “Virgin Media is all about putting consumers back in control,” which it aims to do by not tying customers to inflexible services and contracts. Instead, people are afforded a choice between combinations of the four services on offer. Virgin also aims to shape things up in terms of service and availability.
Previous subscribers to ntl will happily tell you that the quality of customer service offered was less than spectacular. However, with Virgin’s reputation for great service and a proposal to spend £5 million on improving this, Virgin Media seems unlikely to inherit the trend that plagued the digital TV network it had acquired.
Richard Branson has a reputation for taking gambles and is not afraid of going toe-to-toe with market leaders, as he famously did with Virgin Atlantic airlines up against BA in the early 1990’s – his track record indicates that Virgin Media is capable of giving the competition something to think about.
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