RSSNTL Buys Virgin Mobile for $1.67 Billion
By the Betanews Staff | Published April 4, 2006, 11:43 AM
Virgin Mobile said that it had accepted a takeover offer from British cable provider NTL on Tuesday, which would create a telecommunications powerhouse combining high-speed Internet, mobile and landline phone service, and cable television. The company would use the Virgin brand name under a 30-year licensing deal.
NTL paid 962.4 million pounds ($1.67B USD) for Virgin Mobile after a four-month pursuit of the cellular service provider. NTL previously offered 817 million pounds ($1.4B USD) for the company, however shareholders rejected the deal. Virgin Mobile would continue to be based in the U.K., NTL said.
wtf thats so much ****ing money
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|I can't remember a call to NTL's "support" without a wait of at least 10 minutes, frequently much longer. When I do get through it is obvious they are trying their best, although hamstrung by NTL's system. I sincerely hope they CAN get their act together.
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|NTL are the ones who paid £962 Million yet they are getting told what to do by Virgin, it doesn't make sense, only recently did NTL buy Telewest which is another company with good services, i'm a customer of NTL and i'm pretty happy with them.
NTL customer service has always been good for me, and even at peek times i've only ever had to wait 3 minutes and they have always been very helpful ...
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|Bad news for Virgin customers, they gain NTL's legendary absymal customer "support".
In the UK, many people don't even know how NTL stay in buisness, with such a low regard for their customers...
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|Mark Gillespie wrote:
Bad news for Virgin customers, they gain NTL's legendary absymal customer "support".
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On the contrary, it seems like the Virgin side of the newly merged NTL/Virgin company
is going to handle the customer services side of things. Which, if true, it's good news.
Virgin to improve customer service at NTL:
http://theregister.co.uk.../04/virgin_ntl_customer/
So let's summarise this with the addition of recent events ... NTL recently acquired
the other major UK cable service provider Telewest. And today, Virgin Mobile has
finally agreed to a takeover from NTL. But as part of this latest deal, the NTL
brand is reportedly going to be dropped in favour of the Virgin brand.
By my estimation, and I don't to be any kind of expert in business matters at all,
but with NTL, Telewest, and Virgin Mobile, merging into a telecommunications
giant, the only people that need to be really worried about all this, are the
beancounters and money vultures over at British Telecom.
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|I just saw Richard Branson on BBC News saying they won't allow NTL to use the Virgin name until their support service is improved. I think this is a great thing as Virgin has great customer support (at least in my experience anyway) and Richard Branson as he is seem to always be true to his word.
All in all it seems like there will be a lot of good things in the future for NTL. If they could get out a Sky+/Tivo like service I would probably swtich from Sky.
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|Surely if NTL are handling things (which they will be, as they bought the Virgin brandname, rather than the otherway round), the people that call the shots, and spend money on support departments and wages, are the same ones that spend money on support departments and wages at NTL. The end result, another NTL, with a customer friendly Virgin name.
Whilst I agree, that currently Virgin have a reasonable name, when it comes to customer care, this is likely to survive any NTL shake-ups, and the customer comes 1st ethos will be replaced with the maximise profits ethos..
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|Wonder what this means for virgin usa......as an aside, if probable/feasable & a bit off-topic i'd welcome a european telco's business style/ideas:
free bundled voip, reasonable pricing for low-incomites, interactive set top boxes(esp. re sports, horse wagering).....
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