Virgin Media subscriber numbers

beauf

Geographically Cable can't can't deliver in even more areas

Considering most devices will connect via wifi and its sub par unless you got the latest router which is only available with the top BB package. That would suggest the majority of people probably get a subpar experience, with the configuration they have.

While no one can defend Eircom, you can't directly compare the telephone network with the TV network. There's a lot of historical and technical differences that mean TV cable isn't as widely available and telephone cable has technical limitations.

For those reasons a lot of people are still stuck in tech wilderness

The most recent Akami State of the Internet report found that while average Irish broadband speeds are now among the best in the world, there is staggering inequality in internet speeds across the country. The Akami report for the first three months of 2015 showed that while the average broadband speed was 17Mb/s, ranking in the top 10 average speeds worldwide, speeds above 15Mb/s were available to just 21pc of the population. The vast majority of the Irish population, 69pc, have access to broadband speeds over a basic 4Mb/s, with more than a quarter, 27 pc, dealing with staggering slow speeds of less than 4Mb/s.

7upfree

beauf wrote: »

For those reasons a lot of people are still stuck in tech wilderness

Only in rural areas. Cable now covers a huge amount of cities and towns.

beauf

The figures say otherwise....

bk

dub45 wrote: »

Any horizon customer on 360 will be given the new horizon box and that is hardly like to be capable of any wifi improvements given the record of the previous horizon box and its likely domestic location which decreases the likelihood of decent wifi.

You are wrong again, just as you often are!

Anyone who signs up to 360, including Horizon customers, gets the new router. The new router supports 24 DOCSIS channels versus 8 DOCSIS channels on the old router and horizon box. Thus 360 only works on the new router, the new service requires the extra DOCSIS channels.

And BTW, you could always ask for the separate broadband router even when ordering Horizon and in fact I believe they do that by default now.

7upfree

beauf wrote: »

The figures say otherwise....

http://www.libertyglobal.com/oo-ireland.html

836,000 homes passed by UPC. That's 836,000 with access to broadband speeds of 360 Mbps.

7upfree

bk wrote: »

You are wrong again, just as you often are!

Anyone who signs up to 360, including Horizon customers, gets the new router. The new router supports 24 DOCSIS channels versus 8 DOCSIS channels on the old router and horizon box. Thus 360 only works on the new router, the new service requires the extra DOCSIS channels.

And BTW, you could always ask for the separate broadband router even when ordering Horizon and in fact I believe they do that by default now.

Ah he has a chip on his shoulder about UPC. Change the record Dub45!

beauf

7upfree wrote: »

.... Eircom were dragged kicking and screaming to the main event. And still can't deliver in many areas.

7upfree wrote: »

836,000 homes passed by UPC. That's 836,000 with access to broadband speeds of 360 Mbps.

The financial accounts also show that Virgin's broadband growth has slowed considerably, rising 2pc on the same time last year to 371,200. It is the company’s slowest rate of broadband customer growth in Ireland since it introduced the service.

Eir this morning (27 January) reported its second quarter financial results, in which it revealed it is now passing 1.4m homes with fibre-based broadband at speeds of up to 100Mbps.

Even using your "passed" figure what ever that means. Its still nothing close to the coverage of Eir.

beauf

bk wrote: »

Y...And BTW, you could always ask for the separate broadband router even when ordering Horizon and in fact I believe they do that by default now.

I've always had the seperate modem with horizon. The wifi is no better on that. So I have almost always used my own router. Its not even the range of the wifi. Its just far more unreliable than my own router. I have no idea why.

It must drive people who are not techies, crazy.

This is all very old news. We've had threads on these issues on boards for years.

beauf

bk wrote: »

You are wrong again, just as you often are!

Anyone who signs up to 360, including Horizon customers, gets the new router. The new router supports 24 DOCSIS channels versus 8 DOCSIS channels on the old router and horizon box. Thus 360 only works on the new router, the new service requires the extra DOCSIS channels.

And BTW, you could always ask for the separate broadband router even when ordering Horizon and in fact I believe they do that by default now.

At least now we have an option. Even if its the most expensive one.

Sam Russell

beauf wrote: »

Even using your "passed" figure what ever that means. Its still nothing close to the coverage of Eir.

The "passed" figure, I assume, refers to the number of homes who could receive the service if they wished. The difference is that eir has a limited number of slots in each cabinet while Upc does not afaik.

beauf

The web (UK) seems to suggest...

.... but take note that their “homes passed counts are based on census data that can change based on either revisions to the data or from new census results“...

I have no idea what it means.

7upfree

beauf wrote: »

Even using your "passed" figure what ever that means. Its still nothing close to the coverage of Eir.

The difference being that the 836,000 homes ALL have access to those speeds. As for Eircom........ "up to 100Mbps".

If you're 15m away from a cab.......

beauf

Of course they do...

icdg

I really hate to step in here, but I feel I must and remind people that this is the Cable and IPTV forum, with TV being the operative part. There is a very successful Broadband forum elsewhere on Boards. Yes I know in these days of "triple play" that often these buying decisions are tied up together, but I don't want to step on the toes of the Broadband forum either.

The Cush

Liberty Global (Virgin Media) Q2 2016 numbers published today (in brackets, quarter on quarter +/-)
http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/press-release/LG-Earnings-Release-Q2-16-FINAL.pdf

Video Subscribers - 323,300 (-9,300)
--- Analogue Cable - 29,800 (-1,100)
--- Digital Cable - 293,500 (-8,200)
Internet - 364,200 (-3,500)
Telephone - 352,100 (-3,100)

Total Subscribers - 1,039,600 (-15,900)
Premises - 461,500 (-6,700)

Mobile Subscribers - 11,800 (+1,300)

L1011

Massive drops in TV subs continue as peoples price deals expire. Could see digital under a quarter of a mil in a year now Setanta is gone.

I was one of those 3,500 who left during Q1.

The Netflix problems kicked things off and encouraged me to research VM's routing and peering. And I found it to be awful. I decided that I'd rather have a slower raw speed and better performance in the backend, so I moved to an Eir VDSL connection. I was lucky in that I was able to get the full 100Mb from the cab and I'm much happier with that 100Mb connection than I was with Virgin's 360. Router performance didn't come into it since I'm using my own router anyway; the ISP CPE was always just bridged.

JTMan

What a disastrous set of results in Ireland for Liberty Global.

- The trend continues with TV subs on a downward curve. The speed of the decline is accelerating.
- Analogue cable takes another step towards the grave.
- Internet continues on a new-ish downward curve. Worrying when this is their core future focused product.
- Telephone heading downwards with internet as VM have finished force bundling 95% of their broadband customers with telephone.
- Tiny mobile subs but early days.

Why the declines? My thoughts ...
- Cord cutting, Netflix etc.
- People going with FTA satellite and Saoirview.
- People moving to Sky.
- More competition from Vodafone, Eir etc.
- People leaving VM after price increases.
- Force bundling landlines etc that nobody wants.
- Some VM service issues such as the now resolved Netflix issues.
- Price increases.

irishguy1983

Left VM myself - wifi was poor (I'm based in very central location in city) and over all I thought it was very expensive. I know plenty who have left VM.

I moved to EIR which is very cheap - I've lost a few things but overall I'm happy. WIFI is outstanding and whilst TV service it no where near as good as Sky I knew that going in and I pay a cheap price.

7upfree

The Cush wrote: »

Liberty Global (Virgin Media) Q2 2016 numbers published today (in brackets, quarter on quarter +/-)
http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/press-release/LG-Earnings-Release-Q2-16-FINAL.pdf

Video Subscribers - 323,300 (-9,300)
--- Analogue Cable - 29,800 (-1,100)
--- Digital Cable - 293,500 (-8,200)
Internet - 364,200 (-3,500)
Telephone - 352,100 (-3,100)

Total Subscribers - 1,039,600 (-15,900)
Premises - 461,500 (-6,700)

Mobile Subscribers - 11,800 (+1,300)

Do Eircom ever release details like this I wonder?

7upfree

JTMan wrote: »

What a disastrous set of results in Ireland for Liberty Global.

- The trend continues with TV subs on a downward curve. The speed of the decline is accelerating.
- Analogue cable takes another step towards the grave.
- Internet continues on a new-ish downward curve. Worrying when this is their core future focused product.
- Telephone heading downwards with internet as VM have finished force bundling 95% of their broadband customers with telephone.
- Tiny mobile subs but early days.

Why the declines? My thoughts ...
- Cord cutting, Netflix etc.
- People going with FTA satellite and Saoirview.
- People moving to Sky.
- More competition from Vodafone, Eir etc.
- People leaving VM after price increases.
- Force bundling landlines etc that nobody wants.
- Some VM service issues such as the now resolved Netflix issues.
- Price increases.

You mentioned price increases twice there. Interestingly, it looks like TV from EVERY provider will decline as the proliferation of streaming services increases.

This is inevitable. It is technology progressing. But what Liberty seem unable to understand is that if you keep incessantly raising prices then people will leave.

This is also inevitable.

There is a younger generation coming up now who will not subscribe as their ancestors did. TV as we know it is in a terminal decline. It is only a matter of time.

scamalert

nothing new with stats really just shows people coping on -that paying for cable service is waste of cash,netflix other streams same a lot of material that nowadays its easier to get it online then wait until someone decides to release different shows movies in diff countries which averages 6-12months on average,landline phone service - dunno old people and businesses that would use it,so seems natural progression towards mobile be it vm,tesco,three or any other.

Other user mentioning switching due to wifi,which given at least 10 variables from router to network cards,distance,interference its not VMs end to be responsible for,and even with best gear youll hardly get advertised speeds,since cable connection is shared,thus means if any users are hogging hard on same line youll see massive variables in speed,even on cable.

As for price increase anyone who did little work mostly got similar prices once getting to promotional team,where you can go forth and back to get decent price.

That said i was annoyed one too many times with VM on different issues,but eventually id rather stay with company that keeps improving services,even thou theres plenty to choose but dont see any need to take steps back when technology is moving forward.

bk

One thing to keep in mind, Virgin Media Ireland actually increased their revenue and profitability, despite the decrease in customer numbers! This is because of the price increase. Yes the price increases caused people to leave, but most people stayed, and the extra these customers paid, made up from the lost revenue from those that left.

Seemingly this was a Liberty Global decision and they had similar price increases all across Europe. Perhaps gearing up to buy Vodafone.

Of course they need to be careful going forward not to become too uncompetitive and lose too many customers or this maths could reverse.

Luckily for them Eir wholesale (OpenEir) are also looking to increase their broadband prices significantly and this will have a knock on effect with Eir, Sky, Vodafone, etc. all increasing broadband prices and thus closing the price gap.

On the whole not good news for consumers.

icdg

I would expect a significant drop from Eir Sport subscribers moving to other platforms in the next set of results. If we take Virgin's statement that there were 30,000 Setanta Plus Pack subscribers I'd expect the vast majority to leave. There's also going to be a (much) smaller number of people who will leave because there's now no way to watch the entire Formula One season on the platform.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

They'll lose quite a number of UFC fans too I would imagine.

icdg

Yeah, but I was counting them in the 30,000 Setanta Plus subscribers who I expect nearly all of to move.

I singled out Formula One on the other hand because it was available on the Eir Sport 1 (Setanta Ireland) channel available to basic service customers, and one of the few significant rights left on that channel (although they will have only two more seasons of it after this one before the rights move to Sky. Of Eir Sport's other rights, the other ones which might affect basic (as opposed to premium) subscribers would be the GAA Allianz League, which they have one season of left, but it's such a short competition that I don't ultimately think people would move over. (But watch and see if Eir gain any championship rights in the forthcoming auction). There's also the rugby World Cup, but that's three years away and nobody will be moving over that just yet.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

They also covered Cork City and Dundalk in European action this past week, and they do Irish soccer friendlies, but these are one off type games that surely aren't enough to drive subscriptions in any meaningful way.

I would have to assume that the vast majority of subscribers are there because of BT Sports content and not Setanta/Eirs offering.

Radio Gold

The Champions league live games not shown live on TV3 / RTE2 might cause a drop in numbers but all CL games are shown as highlights straight after the live game on TV3 / RTE2

icdg

If Dundalk do the seemingly impossible and qualify for the group stages of the Champions League that may have an effect, as RTE and TV3 would be required (as they have done with the play off round) to pick all of Dundalk's fixtures at the expense of any perhaps more lucrative ties that may occur.

7upfree

Also worth bearing in mind that Setanta lost 105 on Virgin. 300,000 viewers. Gone. Surely an impact on ad revenue?