Is it Virgin Cable now?

So you now have almost nationwide coverage for your cable network, and are ready to take on Sky in the digital TV arena. But what do you call yourself? NTL sounds a bit old school, and besides over a third of your customers think they subscribe to Telewest.

Well, in what might prove to be a stroke of genius it appears that the newly merged cable company could find itself called Virgin.

NTL has approached Virgin Mobile in a deal which would see the UK’s fifth largest network (it has five million customers) become part of the cable group. This would enable it offer digital TV, broadband, landline telephony and mobile.

The clever bit though is that the whole business would be marketed as Virgin, which is a lot cooler and has miles better brand recognition than NTL.

As you may have read here, the EU has insisted the Premiership ceases the monopoly Sky has to show live games, so the new Virgin network would be in a very strong position to bid for one of the six football packages on offer.

Sky recently signed a deal to take over Internet Service Provider Easynet and along with Telewest is pioneering HDTV in the UK.

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