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New connections: where are new customers coming from?

But VM will get them next year with a mid term price rise, the rise is calculated from the list price of the products NOT the discounted price the customer is paying!!!! My VM monthly charge went up by nearly a third, hence my parting of the ways from VM.
I suspect they are not going to be able to play the same dirty trick on customers next year. If they do no one will stick with them because they will be the most expensive ISP / quad bundle company. But let's have a look at the T&Cs:

https://prod.ctassets.virginmedia.c...023_as_amended_21_July_2023_v2_11ec03ff26.pdf

(2) The annual price adjustment will apply to the monthly subscription price you are paying at that time and also (if applicable) to the monthly subscription price payable after subsequent expiry of any applicable offer or discount. For example (just for illustrative purposes), if you joined in August 2023 on an offer price where the monthly subscription charge is £40 a month for the first 18 months, then standard pricing from
month 19 (currently £50 a month), using RPI rates that are illustrative only:

Year 1: In April 2024 you would see your offer price increase to £43.56 a month (if RPI announced in the preceding February was 5%, plus the 3.9%) i.e. £40 x 1.089 = £43.56. Your standard monthly price payable from month 19 would increase also (£50 × 1.089= £54.45), although you would not pay this amount until February 2025, 18 months from the date that you entered your contract; and

Year 2: In April 2025 (provided you have not re-contracted onto another price) you would be paying the standard monthly price and you would see your monthly subscription charge increase from £54.45 to £56.57 a month (if RPI announced in the preceding February was minus 1.5%, meaning we only applied the 3.9% increase) i.e. £54.45 x 1.039 = £56.57355;


So it's clear they won't do it again. But if you let your contrct lapse and remain with them, then yes the rises will apply to the non-discounted contract price. But then again you will crazy to stay with VM on a non-discounted contract as the price difference is crazy. I do feel sorry for the people that don't check their bills and get ripped off by this as they are probably the most vulnerable...
 
PS: Note how the worked out example is so unrealistic. First the discount is just 20% (from £50 to £40) which is way below what VM usually offers. Then the RPI in year 1 is 5% and in year 2 -1.5%. 5% RPI may happen in a 1-3 years if we are lucky. I doubt we will see -1.5% in some time!

Currently I pay £47.37 for the VOLT Ultimate plan + Sky Sports UHD (excluding the O2 SIM) with the bundle priced at £164.50 and discounts of £117.13. Their pricing structure is insane really. £47.37 is almost 3.5x £164.50 so should I even forget to recontract a single month they will make almost £120 in pure profit.
 
PS: Note how the worked out example is so unrealistic. First the discount is just 20% (from £50 to £40) which is way below what VM usually offers. Then the RPI in year 1 is 5% and in year 2 -1.5%. 5% RPI may happen in a 1-3 years if we are lucky. I doubt we will see -1.5% in some time!

Currently I pay £47.37 for the VOLT Ultimate plan + Sky Sports UHD (excluding the O2 SIM) with the bundle priced at £164.50 and discounts of £117.13. Their pricing structure is insane really. £47.37 is almost 3.5x £164.50 so should I even forget to recontract a single month they will make almost £120 in pure profit.
Their profit margins are absolutely huge.
Even when you are paying them £40, I reckon profit from that is at least £25 if not £30.
 
Their profit margins are absolutely huge.
Even when you are paying them £40, I reckon profit from that is at least £25 if not £30.
Not really. Below are their 2022 accounts. £431m / £3365m is 12.8% profit margin. That's very reasonable to me. Even the 2021 ones are ~21%.

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If someone has BT FTTC through Openreach and they take out FTTP with BT on Openreach but they don't get their Copper cable pulled out its just left there dead unused.. Will this have them be classed as a new customer to Openreach/BT or not in the stats? I have a feeling it will have them be classed as a new customer.
 
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If someone has BT FTTC through Openreach and they take out FTTP with BT on Openreach but they don't get their Copper cable pulled out its just left there dead unused.. Will this have them be classed as a new customer to Openreach/BT or not in the stats? I have a feeling it will have them be classed as a new customer.
It's one lost and one new, net 0 gain. The stats look at number of active customers. So it's irrelevant if it's a new customer or one changing technologies. It only counts active connections. Do keep in mind that more and more people have 2 internet connections now, for backup reasons, to overlap services during change overs or for whatever reason.
 
If someone has BT FTTC through Openreach and they take out FTTP with BT on Openreach but they don't get their Copper cable pulled out its just left there dead unused.. Will this have them be classed as a new customer to Openreach/BT or not in the stats? I have a feeling it will have them be classed as a new customer.
The FTTP connection would count towards the figures noted in the BT Group quarterly and annual reports for GEA-FTTP connections. The unused FTTC connection would be thus deducted from their tally.

The end user isn't a customer of Openreach. They are customers of their respective service providers / ISP, who in turn are customers of Openreach.

It is the connections figures that are important. See most recent set of Openreach KPI's (although I'm led to understand Group will no longer publish connection figures / premised passed on a quarterly basis):

 
The FTTP connection would count towards the figures noted in the BT Group quarterly and annual reports for GEA-FTTP connections. The unused FTTC connection would be thus deducted from their tally.

The end user isn't a customer of Openreach. They are customers of their respective service providers / ISP, who in turn are customers of Openreach.

It is the connections figures that are important. See most recent set of Openreach KPI's (although I'm led to understand Group will no longer publish connection figures / premised passed on a quarterly basis):

Interesting. You can see the shift from Consumer revenue into Openreach revenue. So even though they don't say how many customers they have in OR and BT it seems clear to me they are losing on BT and gaining on OR. The only reason BT still grows, albeit slower, is because of network expansion. It's going to be so interesting when Openreach finishes the FTTP build to see how many customers are left in BT and how will BT sustain them.
 
Exact connection figures are commercially sensitive so we are unlikely to get an accurate figure. In addition there is currently double counting, Hey! for instance, offer free broadband while you existing contract expires.

The market may still go in various directions and an interesting year ahead (brand loyalty, cost of living, digital voice etc).
 
Well I looked at all the VM financial statements since 2007 and here are the broadband numbers:

2007 521100
2008 556800
2009 506200
2010 584600
2011 642300
2012 670900
2013 689452
2014 712700
2015 736500
2016 765800
2017 800805
2018 3967600 (bought some of NTL)
2019 5013100 (bought more of NTL)
2020 5137200
2021 5185600
2022 5653800 (no longer reported, extrapolated from 2023 Q1 from this article)
2023 5682600 (no longer reported, end of Q1 from this article)

So VM has not experienced a net loss of broadband customers since 2009 (probably due to financial crisis?). Of course that is due to continued network expansion and upgrades and the massive jump by buying NTL. But still not bad I would say.
Pretty confused where these numbers come from. Liberty bought all of both ntl and Telewest as Virgin Media in 2013, and ntl and Telewest merged in 2006, both having 7-figures broadband subscribers each.
 
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Pretty confused where these numbers come from. Liberty bought all of both ntl and Telewest as Virgin Media in 2013, and ntl and Telewest merged in 2006, both having 7-figures broadband subscribers each.
I was looking at the Virgin Media Limited full accounts on companies house. Most likely they left NTL as a separate entity until they transferred all customers to VM Ltd a few years later.
 
I was looking at the Virgin Media Limited full accounts on companies house. Most likely they left NTL as a separate entity until they transferred all customers to VM Ltd a few years later.
Okay. No idea. ntl:telewest became Virgin Media, Inc in late 2006 and reported results accordingly.

ntl hadn't been a separate entity since 2006. ntl reverse-acquired Telewest the same year. Looks as though they kept ntl Group Ltd alive under different names.

That's definitely nowhere near the full number of ntl customers at any point: I think there are multiple companies owned by 'Virgin Media Investments Ltd' due to the history of ntl and Telewest, each in turn owning different cable franchises.

The results of ntl Group show it as owning 100% of some franchises but certainly nowhere near all of them which might well explain it.

ntl had 1.5 million broadband customers in 2005, Telewest had over a million by merger time.

Mystery solved. The franchises were split into holding companies based on historical reasons and likely taxation, and eventually those benefits ran out and the family came together.
 
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