The long-anticipated merger of the main cable television operators in the UK will enable them to compete more effectively with both BT and BSkyB.
The long-anticipated merger of the main cable television operators in the UK will enable them to compete more effectively with both BT and BSkyB.
Between them, Telewest and NTL have around 2.7 million digital cable television customers, compared to 7.4 million satellite subscribers and 5.2 million digital terrestrial television homes in the UK.
They also have around 2.5 million residential broadband customers, compared to around 2 million subscribing directly to BT broadband services, although BT also provides around 3.6 million broadband lines to other operators on a wholesale basis.
The merged company will also become the largest fixed telephony provider in the country, with 4.3 million subscribers.
The combined broadband access network represents a total investment of around £13 billion.
The combined cable operation will be able to market its services more effectively on a national basis, offering a combination of video, voice and data services, aiming to challenge the predominance of satellite television provider BSkyB.
NTL has 1.4 million digital television customers, and 1.5 million broadband customers, or revenue generating units as they are called in the trade, far less than the 2.7 million customers that take their telephone service from the cable company.
Less than a fifth of homes passed take the NTL television service and less than a quarter of NTL customers currently take the ‘triple-play’ combination of television, telephony, and high-speed internet services.
Telewest has 1.3 million digital television customers, and around 0.8 million broadband subscribers, with 1.7 million taking their telephone service. Around a quarter of homes passed receive digital television from Telewest, and a third of their customers take the bundle of all three services.
The service areas of the two companies do not overlap, and together their combined footprint passes nearly 12 million homes, more than half the country.
Burdened by debt, the sophistication of cable television services in the UK has lagged behind satellite, and customer service has been an issue, but concerted competition from a combined cable operation could re-invigorate the platform.