VIRGIN MEDIA RELAUNCH

The relaunch of NTL this week under the banner of Virgin Media is the subject of much press speculation and comment.
This mornings Guardian Media carries an article by Richard Wray entitled

This man wants your house

Richard describes the new market as

now there is "four-play", the opportunity for the ailing cable industry to bundle TV, broadband, mobile and fixed-line telephony into a quadruple package that could dominate the digital-age home.

For cable Tv,this relaunch is described as a last throw of the dice by Wray

Virgin's Head of Marketing James Kydd refutes the charge that this is just a name change

The company, has spent the past six months replacing the customer service systems and processes that have been so obviously lacking within NTL and Telewest - which finally merged over a year ago. Cable has become synonymous with awful service, spawning such customer sites as NTL:hell. The delay in rebranding the business, which is expected to happen on Thursday, is a result of trying to make sure that this time it has got it right.

Any service which has two way intercativity will give the supplier a marked advantage to monitor its customer's viewing habits.

Tiscali launches a similar service in June giving customers 38 Tv channels and 100 hours a month of catch up BBC TV.

Yesterday's Indy ran a similar story

Can brand Branson bail out cable TV?

Andrew Murray Watson's article saying

historically, the nearest NTL customers have got to experiencing infinity is waiting on hold to speak to a human being at one of the company's call centres.
NTL's fortunes have been hamstrung by poor customer service and a lack of financial resources to invest in new technology. As a result it has struggled to keep up with Sky, which has continued to grab a larger slice of the pay-TV market at NTL's expense.

Mr Kydd giving the same broad answers as he has given to the Guardian

"One of the first things we did was to make sure all the call centre staff had chairs that weren't ripped. An awful lot of effort has gone into making sure the basic things have been sorted.
"And we have spent £5m on making sure there are enough staff to answer phones. Previously, the view was that it didn't matter if it took 30 minutes for a customer to get through."
As well as the improvements to the call centres, Virgin Media will this week launch a raft of new services, including at least one new channel. A new digital video recorder called V+, compatible with high-definition, will be introduced that will have greater memory than Sky's equivalent Sky+ box.