The Telegraph features a story today, which if true, will really shake up the UK market. It reports that NTL/Telewest, who are currently in the midst of a merger, are due to announce tomorrow another merger with Virgin Mobile creating an entertainment and communications giant worth £4.5bn and with more than 9m customers. More importantly this would create the UK’s first Four-Play company offering Voice, Video, Data and Wireless.

The deal would solve immediately one major problem facing the new UK Cable company - that of choosing a name, as the new company will obviously be called Virgin. The new company would have:

• 2.5m broadband internet customers, the largest in the UK
• 3.2m TV customers, the second largest in the UK
• 4.3m fixed-line telephony accounts, the second largest in the UK
• 5m mobile phone customers
• Revenues in excess of £4bn.

I thought the Telewest/NTL deal was impressive, but if this deal goes through as well imagine how powerful this company could be and what it could achieve:

• Challenge Sky for Premiership rights
• Launch a mobile TV operation with exclusive video content
• Develop a combined fixed/mobile/VoIP service
• True multi-platform services
• One bill

All backed by the Virgin Brand. No wonder one banker is quoted as saying:

“James Murdoch is going to choke on his muesli when he hears about this one. It’s going to be the battle of the brands - Virgin versus Sky.”

More: Om Malik

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