back to article UK.gov pooh-poohs Virgin Media's whinge to Brussels over beefy broadband pot

Virgin Media has whined about the UK government's broadband rollout scheme, claiming that the £680m taxpayer-funded pot of cash doesn't represent "value for money". The cable company has handed its complaint to state aid officials in Brussels. It has also submitted evidence (PDF) to the cross-party culture, media and sport …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    VM

    ...we can't be arsed to extend our network, therefore no-one else should.

    1. DaisyNews

      Re: VM

      They are such whingers...

  2. eJ2095

    So True

    i do enjoy my monthly have to ring up and claim a tenner off my bill phone call as service crap during the evening

    1. The Second Coming

      Re: So True

      Still doesn't stop them upping their bills every 3 months. Next hit Feb '16 by a staggering £4.99 for what I ask???

      Three separate increases in 2015 and requests for refunds more than 4 times this year. All related to their "Our broadband is getting even faster" but the snails in my garden are faster and they are hibernating!!!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    in other news: Capitalism doesn't work unless you have quick returnds

  4. Richard Jones 1
    WTF?

    VM = Virtual Media?

    After Virtual Media dug up the main road ten or fifteen years ago to get along to the flats and small plot houses further along they left, (a mess) never to do anything more.

    My road is within 50 metres of their cables but Virtual Media do not want to compete or offer service, so Lost all Faith you get an upvote from me. Virtual Media cannot be bothered to provide competition and simply want to block others from doing what they cannot be bothered to do.

    I guess this is what their US master demands, drag in the rubbish USA closed market prices at rubbish USA (sub)standards

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: VM = Virtual Media?

      "My road is within 50 metres of their cables but Virtual Media do not want to compete or offer service, so Lost all Faith you get an upvote from me. Virtual Media cannot be bothered to provide competition and simply want to block others from doing what they cannot be bothered to do."

      It's an economic problem, it's not a "can't be bothered" problem.

      Each house passed costs about £1K. Connection adds another £1K. One in seven homes will actually take the service. If your home is in a street of 70 houses, ten will sign up on a package costing about £50 a month.

      That gives Virgin a cost of £80K to receive an income of about £500 a month or £6K a year. It'll be thirteen years before they have any hope of breaking even and that ignores the other costs of providing service. If they've had to borrow money to fund the £80K the interest payments might mean that they never break even. Virgin is only profitable today because the assets were bought in fire sales from the original cable companies that all went bust.

      Most investors presented with such a prospect will simply stick their money in the bank.

      1. Noel Morgan

        Re: VM = Virtual Media?

        Very strange economics

        You are suggesting that after they had spent the inital £70K to pass all 70 houses the would prefer not to connect up any of them !

        1. TheProf
          Devil

          Re: VM = Virtual Media?

          Well they want to connect me up! I receive a lovely big letter from them on a, at least, monthly basis. Great swathes of paper offering me the unalloyed delights of limitless downloads and unending amounts of televisual treats. And all for the miserly sum of 'HOW F*CKING MUCH???'

          No ta!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: VM = Virtual Media?

          "You are suggesting that after they had spent the inital £70K to pass all 70 houses the would prefer not to connect up any of them !"

          No, I'm saying that there's very little point in them spending the £70K and very few investors who will lend it to them.

          1. JohnMurray

            Re: VM = Virtual Media?

            I thought the whole point of any virgin group company was to get the taxpayer to stump-up cash, then sell the biz and bugger-off abroad?

      2. Richard Jones 1
        FAIL

        Re: VM = Virtual Media?

        I could almost accept your assertion that it was an economic issue. However, using bully boy methods to deny the prospect of anyone else doing any to ease the problems with which Virtual Media cannot be bothered, speaks of less savoury agendas. If Virtual Media cannot run their business well enough to meet legitimate service desires, let them but out again. If some cannot have the option, why should anyone deal with them? Please make the case for the unbalanced, unsatisfactory present status.

        Of course one answer might be to fold all the network level activities into one company combining Open Reach (Out of Reach?) and Virtual Media 'Out of Reach Virtual Media' perhaps and let the sloppy service providers run their sloppy service on the highways so created. Only having to build, maintain and operate one network should allow some economies of scale and less duplication of limited economic effort. This would allow the gravy to be spread more evenly and over a greater service area. I am sure Sky would like that, or perhaps not?

      3. David Roberts

        Re: VM = Virtual Media?

        "Virgin is only profitable today because the assets were bought in fire sales from the original cable companies that all went bust."

        Looking back, this seems very possible. At least to the penultimate stage. Not sure NTL went bust but loads of smaller cable companies were subsumed.

        Looking at it another way, connecting premises to the core Internet has a cost. If it was an obvious winner then there would surely be a new generation of local cable companies connecting up new estates to a local exchange and expanding their customer base .

        I can't see this happening at the moment apart from in very high density locations like central London.

        So I conclude (possibly wrongly) that for most of the country it does not make economic sense for the large players to roll out new connections because all the low hanging fruit has been picked and there is not an acceptable return on investment.

        To note that I am a VM customer and am quite happy that my service has grown from around 10 Mbps to a nominal 150 Mbps over the last few years. The real speed started at 150 Mbps but has slowly dropped back to 100 Mbps (as measured by Sam Knows). As far as I know I cannot get an equivalent service from BT.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: VM = Virtual Media?

          "Not sure NTL went bust but loads of smaller cable companies were subsumed."

          They didn't. They "merged" with Telewest (tv channel contractual clauses with BBC/UKTV, Telewest nominally bought out NTL) and became NTL:Telewest. They later bought the rights to use the Virgin brand as Virginmedia and "traded as" Virginmedia under the umbrella of NTL:Telewest. It was NTL:Telewest who recently sold up shop to Liberty Global, who now own Virginmedia.

    2. DaisyNews

      Re: VM = Virtual Media?

      I live in a block of 60 flats. They are two cabinets on the wall. One cabinet is connected to 52 flats. The other cabinet, just two or three meters away on the same wall, they refuse to connect for health and safety reasons. Their website tells me "WOW! FABULOUS!!!! Your'e IN!!!! We can connect you!!!!"

      But they can't. They took my money, I paid £164 up front, they sent three guys to install, they drilled holes all over my flat and installed two plastic boxes (all wonky so they look terrible) I've had to move the furniture to hide them.

      They haven't been back since!!! They say I can't be connected !!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    " doesn't represent "value for money"

    At least Mockridge is speaking of that which he knows. Virginmedia certainly don't offer their customers value for money, to judge by the latest of a series of inflation busting price rises, in return for speed increases that are not perceptible to the vast majority of customers.

  6. gotes

    Thanks VM

    When can we expect to see Virgin Media available in rural areas then?

  7. graeme leggett Silver badge

    it is no longer necessary in today’s investment-rich market

    Which is why I am inundated with offers of different low-cost ways I can be connected to the modern world.

    Oh no, my mistake - it's actually only Virgin Media who litter my hallway with their subscription TV offers.

    1. Santa from Exeter

      Re: it is no longer necessary in today’s investment-rich market

      That's interesting.

      How do you manage to dodge the mountain of crap from Sky, BT, Talk Talk etc.?

      1. graeme leggett Silver badge

        Re: it is no longer necessary in today’s investment-rich market

        I don't get any from others. I think about half of the VM stuff is generic "householder" at my address. The rest is personally addressed but since VM want me to phone them to stop the crud I count the short walk to the recycle bin as exercise and VMs futile postings as a miniscule subsidy for Royal Mail.

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: it is no longer necessary in today’s investment-rich market

      Ah VM. I get those flyers on a regular basis. Like every two weeks.

      There has to be some way to get them to stop.

      I've end collected months of the things and sent them back to their return address with no stamp on so they'd have to pay.

      They really are the scum of the earth.

      See Icon for what I'd like to do to them.

  8. lsces

    Having now to live with a POORER sevice because all the other local cabinets have been converted and now overload the exchange, I'm now stuck that even subsidised our cabinet is 'not economocally viable' so how would VM cover the cost?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Because competition has done such a good job getting those areas online to date... oh no wait.

    And Virgin has such an agressive expansion policy and might come to my area soon, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

    Actually when was the last time they cabled up a new area?

    1. Not That Andrew

      I'm pretty sure it was when they were still called NTL. So this century at least.

      1. The Second Coming

        It was Nynex in my day and the service (if you can call it that) is just as crap as it was then.

  10. Your alien overlord - fear me

    So if there is upto £800 million in returns, why the $%^& isn't VM fighting tooth and nail for it? It's not likely that it's too much money for the bearded one's old company surely? Or is it that VM's new American owners can't workout the exchange rate properly?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "So if there is upto £800 million in returns, why the $%^& isn't VM fighting tooth and nail for it?"

      It's suggested in the article that a condition pf getting on the gravey train is opening up their network as a wholesaler to competitors in the same way Openreach have to,

      "It's not likely that it's too much money for the bearded one's old company surely? Or is it that VM's new American owners can't workout the exchange rate properly?"

      Branson never owned VM, he just licensed out the name for £10 mill + his co-operation in some advertising. He probably got some of the £10 mill in shares but he was never a major player in VM

  11. Pseudonymous Diehard

    VM?

    I want my broadband bare metal. I dont want it virtualised.

    Jokes aside, im on VM s'alright.

    Its not the 300Mbps I had on a remote island in Thailand though.

    *grumble*

    Im going back to the angry dome. Im clearly not done yet.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Virgin Media / Tom Mockridge

    Virgin Media offer the world and deliver nothing for months on end. They say my flat can be connected, but they refuse to connect it. Does anyone know why they would do this? All the other flats in my building are connected via a cabinet, but the other cabinet (on the same wall, not three meters away) they refuse to connect for 'health and safety' reasons. Tom Mockridge seems to take no responsibility I have written to him three times and he has never responded.

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