Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company, founded in 2007, which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. A range of videos advertising the company (many of which star Richard Branson and actor David Tennant) remain available on YouTube. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica.
Virgin Media owns and operates its own fibre-optic cable network in the United Kingdom, although in most areas optical fibre does not reach customer premises, instead going to a nearby street cabinet to provide a fibre to the cabinet service. As of 31 December 2012, it had a total of approximately 4.8 million cable customers, of whom around 3.79 million were supplied with its television services (Virgin TV), around 4.2 million with broadband internet services and around 4.1 million with fixed-line telephony services. At the same date, it had around 3 million mobile telephony customers. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin Media is the main cable provider in the UK, with the exception of WightFibre on the Isle of Wight, and covers 51% of UK households. Virgin Media competes primarily in broadband with Sky Group, BT Group and TalkTalk, and in mobile with EE, Vodafone and Three.
Telewest and NTL Incorporated
The company's origins lie in both Telewest and NTL, which merged in March 2006.
Telewest began in 1984 in Croydon under the name "Croydon Cable", and was acquired by United Cable of Denver in 1988. The company expanded during the 1990s and adopted the Telewest name in 1992 following the merger of its then-parent TCI and US West. It expanded into cable television access in 1999 by purchasing the remaining 50% stake in Cable London, one of the first cable TV companies in the UK, from NTL, adding 400,000 homes in north London. In April 2000 Telewest merged with Flextech, and in November extended its cable network with the acquisition of Eurobell, taking the total number of homes past 4.