Cable giant Virgin Media UK has reported its latest third quarter 2009 results. Total broadband subscribers increased from 3,980,900 in Q2 to 4,027,400 in Q3, which represents a steady return to growth after a slow second quarter when just a few thousand broadband customers were added.

The big news is that their revamped off-net / Virgin National (Virgin.net ADSL) broadband service, which now offers ADSL2+ speeds of up to 20Mbps and bundles phone line services too, has finally started growing again. Subscribers increased from 245,700 in Q2 to 253,200 in Q3. The cable broadband service increased from 3,735,200 to 3,774,200 over the same period.


Customers with 10Mbps or higher broadband connections increased 157% year-on-year (including migration) to 2.70m, representing 72% of all users. Customers with speeds of 20Mbps or higher increased 40% year-on-year to 0.5m, representing 13% users. 2Mbps to 10Mbps upgrades continued – 834,000 customers have been upgraded so far.

Virgin Media has also revealed that they had just 20,000 customers on their newest 'up to' 50Mbps cable broadband service, though September's recent price cut is said to have boosted the growth rate and we can expect to see signs of that in Q4's results. Interestingly more than 40% of 50Mbps subscribers in Q3 were new customers instead of upgrades.