John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Global Inc. known in the US as both the ‘Cable King’ and ‘Darth Vader’ for his ruthless business approach, has reportedly expressed an interest in purchasing Virgin Media.
Malone, who has crossed sabres with Rupert Murdoch before in boardroom buyouts, owns several cable networks throughout Europe and his Liberty Global group includes content providers which produce the Discovery Channel and QVC.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Malone joking referred to his namesake when questioned about adding the UK cable network to his collection, wondering if competition could flourish under the “Death Star,” referring to the market dominance of Sky.
He added “We have to look at it, not in a traditional way but in a quite exceptional way, perhaps with partners, perhaps in ways we’d not regard a normal cable company,” said Malone, suggesting that a joint takeover bid, possibly with the Carlyle Group, who own the American cable group Insight may be on the cards.
This could be great news for Virgin Media customers, as a source quoted in the Guardian suggests that the Sky channels debacle could be resolved:
“John knows Rupert and the boys very well and admires them’, says a source close to LGI. ‘Malone is highly unlikely to team up with Branson against Rupert, his old friend and sparring partner. He and Murdoch are friendly rivals and have shared a common interest in the past, reaching deals with each other. He would quickly seek a resolution of the channel and carriage fees dispute and he would seek to establish a sort of professional competitive position.”
When rumours about a possible Virgin takeover first surfaced, James Murdoch stated that he hoped that whoever took over from Virgin would be able to “engage in a more real way” to reach agreement over returning channels to cable TV homes.
Welcome to the ‘Version 2.0′ look of the Broadband Finder blog, part of the recent new look overhaul of Broadband Finder. We have rolled-out this new and improved site giving the users more flexibility, choice, in-depth information, news articles and user friendly tools to make choosing your broadband package and easier process.
New features include a revamped home page showing recommended broadband providers in a quick comparison guide, and a local availability check tool, which lists the available broadband services operating in your postcode area. is now available, to enable you to jump straight to our broadband package listings. There are also questions to establish your current broadband status along with a direct route to our broadband bundles page.
Another added feature is the Line Speed Checker, which allows you to check the average connection speed your phone line will support from the exchange. Further features include the latest broadband breaking news stories along with links to our comprehensive and informative news pages. We have also arranged packages into usage categories from Light, Average and Heavy packages (Light = infrequent use, Average = general use, Heavy = intense use).
Our main aim for the site is to allow you to be able to efficiently and effectively choose a broadband package to suit your needs which is why we have developed our new look comparison pages for consumer and business broadband. There are also comparison pages for broadband bundles and an in-depth broadband search page called Broadband Finder, where you can tailor make a broadband package to suit your needs.
The main compare broadband page allows you to input your postcode and it will display all the broadband packages available within your postcode area. You will also be able to sort these results by clicking on the relevant headings within the table to display sorted results (high to low or low to high).
We now have our new business broadband page allowing our business customers to search for the most suitable broadband package in the business broadband market, including services from BT, Demon and Eclipse. Our range of packages goes from the single business user through to large companies who require connections for hundreds of employees.
Another additional resource that we have added, is allowing you to be able to bundle in your broadband package with other services throughout our Broadband Bundles resource. These services include adding your home phone, TV and even your mobile phone packages together, so that all your communications and entertainment services can be paid easily on one monthly bill. This page feature well-known companies such as Sky, Virgin, BT, and Orange.
All these comparison pages come with an Editor’s Choice section, which highlights what broadband package is ‘hot’ in the broadband marketplace. We also have our featured offers throughout the site which offer you the companies, with what we think at Broadband Finder, to be the best offers around.
Our news feed provides regular up-to-the-minute Broadband News and our informative Broadband Finder blog, as always, is regularly updated with new features and articles – just like the one you’re reading now. Other resources include our Broadband Directory to easily source your broadband package or provider and a very informative Broadband Information section giving you the low-down on broadband.
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