Description
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.
