Music channels Bliss, Flaunt and Scuzz have been dropped from the former NTL side of Virgin Media‘s cable TV line-up, after an agreement to show the channels on the ex-Telewest network with owners Chart Show Channels Media Group fell through.
Virgin Media Technical Support had this to say: “We are continuing to harmonise our Digital TV offering and the removal of these channels forms part of that process. All these channels were in our XL TV package and any XL customers can get unlimited access to Music Video On Demand for no extra cost. This service allows the viewer to choose from over 1000 music videos, and play them when they want.”
Once owned by Sky, these three channels are now fully part of the CSC Media Group.
Rock and metal channel Scuzz underwent a revamp earlier this year and began playing full-length live performances, and Flaunt, traditionally a pop/boyband channel, repositioned its aim for the ‘pink pound’ market.
The third quarter of 2007 hasn’t been exactly great for the UK Broadband market. Take up has plummeted to 470,000 new subscribers from July to September to reach a total of 14.98 million; by comparison 510,000 customers were added in the previous quarter. Virgin Media and BT are expected to announce a figure slumps when they publish their reports on Wednesday (Virgin) and Thursday (BT) this week.
The main reason for this is that the number of new broadband customers is shrinking – the market was always going to plateau this way at some point, but it was not expected to happen so soon.
It is estimated that there is a number of customers who are still on dial-up, because dial-up is all they need – they don’t want or require broadband, any may be put off by the widely publicised gap between the estimated ‘up to’ speeds and the actual, achievable speed.
Also, ISPs should have taken into account those who live in remote locations where broadband simply isn’t viable. Analysts fear that unless this trend of Broadband Brazilification is rectified, then future IPTV and New Media 2 platforms have little hope of making a nationwide impact, engendering cultural divides across regions.
Pipex have relaunched their consumer broadband packages, in a bid to shake up their image following the very public Tiscali carve-up. The most significant aspect of this rebranding sees the ISP following AOL‘s lead by introducing transparent data allowance limits, putting an end to the confusing and frustrating misuse of the word ‘unlimited’.
The three old Pipex packages, Mini, Midi, and Max are joined by a fourth – Pipex Pro – offering customers usage limits of 2GB, 10GB, 30GB and 100GB, all at the same maximum speeds of 8Mbps.
The Pipex Mini package, available for £9.99 a month comes with evening and weekend landline calls included, as well as a SpeedTouch 510 Ethernet modem. This same modem comes included with the Midi package, although Mini and Midi customers have the option to upgrade to the wireless SpeedTouch 585 router for £30 – this comes included with the Max and Pro packages as standard.
Pipex customers who are currently still signed up to the previous packages will continue to be billed until the end of their contract as per usual, although we assume that if you want to switch to one of the new packages you will be able to do so, with the time left on your existing contract added to the new one. Standard contract length for these new packages is 12 months.
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