As Virgin Media gets ready for marketing push through its sponsorship of Big Brother 8, the company has been dealt a blow by a new survey.
Commissioned by Swiss investment bank, UBS, and conducted by research company GfK NOP, the survey of 1,000 households found that 45% of Virgin's television customers would switch provider if they could. Of the study group, 10% planned to quit as a result of the removal of Sky One and other channels from Virgin's cable service.
The research stated that Virgin was suffering an "identity crisis" as Sky's broadband and landline offerings had taken away from Ntl:Telewest previous "triple-play" offering, and that the customers surveyed perceived that Sky offered a better product and customer service. Although 14% of households had an "ideological aversion to Sky and are unlikely ever to subscribe."
The report said: "Our survey strongly suggests that Sky customers do not see Virgin as a credible alternative...Virgin appears to have underestimated the value of Sky's basic channels, with our survey indicating up to 400,000 subscribers could switch to Sky."
So the loss of the Sky channels looks like it may have a knock on effect for Virgin Media - Sky have already gained a reported 180,000 customers since Virgin lost the channels, a lot of which have been directly related to the loss, it looks like many more could be on the way.
To be honest, I have never understood why people settle for the second class service that NTL/Virgin Media have offered since CWC sold up 6 years ago. There has been very little investment, the services have always been riddle with problems and years behind sky, the EPG is 3rd party Liberate software whereas Sky's is in house developed which is why it works so much better, only a 3 day EPG, very little interactive and overall less channels.
People say they save a couple of quid a month, but its not really worth it at all imho when one considers the quality of the Sky television service when compared to NTL/Virgin's pathetic attempt.
Its only just starting to move past where CWC had developed it to, and they sold up 6 years ago, that tells ye how outdated it is.
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