Virgin broadband customers rise

Virgin Media now has more than 3.41 million broadband customers in the UK, according to the company's latest financial report.

In Virgin's figures for the first quarter of 2007, cable broadband customer numbers climbed to 3.15 million, with a further 260,000 using telephone line broadband services.

But the company has suffered from its dispute with Sky over the loss of certain Sky channels from Virgin's TV offering.

Virgin blamed "the loss of BSkyB’s basic channels from our platform and increased competitor activity," for the drop in new signups to all services in the first part of the year, to 184,300 from 213,500 in the last quarter of 2006.

"Intense publicity surrounding the channels’ withdrawal caused customer confusion and affected the acquisition of new subscribers," Virgin Media said.

However, Virgin will not release information about how many customers decided to leave the company over the loss of basic Sky channels until later in the year. As customers need to give 30 days notice of their intention to opt out of Virgin Media's services the figures will appear in the results for the second quarter of 2007.

Chris Frost of price comparison service uSwitch.com warned that the next quarter's results could be far worse.

"The short term incentives, such as discounted packages offered by Virgin Media during their public spat with Sky have temporarily served to retain dissatisfied customers, but this may not remain the case over the next few months," said Frost.

http://www.virginmedia.com/

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