Virgin Media goes for quality, not quantity, in its push for customers

Broadband and pay-TV giant Virgin Media today insisted a drop in the number of new cable customers does not matter as it focuses on wooing higher-spending consumers.

Virgin added a net 20,000 cable customers in the first three months of the year against 38,000 a year earlier.

Chief financial officer Eamonn O'Hare admitted: "Sure, you're not getting that very aggressive number of customers growing but you're seeing the quality of the customers growing."

Thirty nine per cent of new customers are taking more-expensive broadband of 20MB or higher while 41% are paying for high-definition TV. Virgin, which has 4.3 million broadband and 3.8 million TV subscribers, says 65,000 have also signed up for its new TiVo on-demand TV service.

Revenues rose 5.7% to £982 million while free cashflow, a key measure of profitability, doubled. "A little bit of top-line growth is driving exceptional cashflow," added O'Hare.

Virgin swung to a pre-tax profit of £23.7 million from a £166.3 million loss a year earlier.

It is also trialling 1.5 gigabyte broadband, 75 times larger than 20MB, for businesses near Old Street, known as Silicon roundabout.