Skip to main content

Virgin Group and NTL Will Incite Competition

TelecomTV reports that as expansive cable operator NTL transforms into Virgin over the next eight or nine months, one of its key competitive strategies will be to offer free multi-channel TV programming to subscribers signing up for its multi-play offering of broadband Internet access, fixed and mobile telephony and cable TV services.

Robert Samuelson, the man in charge of Virgin Telecoms and Media says, �The thing about selling four products together is that you can offer one of them for free.� The newly-branded NTL will be the first operator in Britain to offer quad-play and Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group and a man who will hold a 14 percent stake in the merged company once the takeover by NTL is completed says, �Across the board we want to make sure we are the competitive leader in the marketplace.�

He�s going to meet determined resistance, especially from Rupert Murdoch�s Sky empire. The commercially aggressive Aussie will not stand idly by as NTL seeks to grab chunks of the market his company currently dominates and is likely to respond quickly and forcefully.

To that end, in May, Sky is set to launch Britain�s first high-definition (HD) TV service and the nationwide availability of the new HD box that is expected to boost the sluggish uptake of high-definition ready TV sets and and add yet another twist to the increasingly competitive bundled communication and entertainment services market in the UK.

Popular posts from this blog

The AI Application Integration Challenge

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly become the defining force in business technology development, but integrating AI into applications remains a formidable challenge. According to a recent Gartner survey, 77 percent of engineering leaders identify AI integration in apps as a major hurdle for their organizations. As demand for AI-powered solutions accelerates across every industry, understanding the tools, the barriers, and the opportunities is essential for business and technology leaders seeking to evolve. The Gartner survey highlights a key trend: while AI’s potential is widely recognized, the path to useful integration is anything but straightforward. IT leaders cite complexities in embedding AI models into existing software, managing data pipelines, ensuring security, and maintaining compliance as persistent obstacles. These challenges are compounded by a shortage of skilled AI engineers and the rapid evolution of AI technologies, which can outpace organizational readiness and...