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
