Virgin Media staves off cable punter seepage

Virgin Media told the City this morning that it lost 14,700 cable punters during its second quarter ended 30 June.

But the telco said this figure is far fewer than 36,000 customers who scarpered from the company in the same three-month period a year ago.

All of which means that Virgin Media is pleased with itself.

The ISP added that revenues for the quarter were up 4.2 per cent on the same period last year, as more of its customers - 459,800 in total - opted to sign up for its faster broadband offering. The telco said it now has 1.3 million customers on the higher speed package, who make up 31 per cent of the overall broadband customer base.

Sales topped the £1bn mark in the three months, and operating income was £179.6m - up from 2011 Q2's £134.9m.

The company said customer churn was 1.4 per cent during the second quarter, up from 1.2 per cent in the first three months of this year.

Meanwhile, the likes of Stephen Fry and David Tennant appearing on adverts punting VM's internet-based TiVo service managed to push the number of online TV customers on its books beyond 1 million this week. It said 261,700 subscribers were added to TiVo during its Q2 results.

Year-on-year, VM's overall cable customer base remained flat at 4.8 million subs. ®