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Virgin Media has crash, bang, walloped its way on to every TV channel, billboard, bus stop, newspaper and magazine over the past few months. It promises VIPs - Very Important Packages - to seduce you into switching your existing phone, TV, broadband or mobile provider. Indeed, they really want you to change all four of these; and in fact, I think they have a good case. All publicity is good publicity a wise man once said, and, as you will know doubt know, the enormous advertising campaign has been seconded by a fiasco with Sky. Sky has doubled the prices of basic Sky channels like Sky One for Virgin Media, despite a downward trend in popularity of these selections. The company has also decreased the price it pays for Virgin Media owned channels such as Living and Bravo, and Virgin Media has stated that it will no longer stand Sky 'abusing its market power'. Now the case is going to court as Sky believes it has been playing the game fair and square. Watch this space. Virgin Media is however more than just a provider of moving pictures. It can route to your home the sound waves of your mother's voice (or anyone else in fact), and even give rapid internet. Also, the acorn of the Virgin Media oak, Virgin Mobile, is still available, and comes with the packages available. But which packages are available I hear you cry! There are three, starting, not at 'Tiny' or 'Small' but surprisingly called a 'Medium' package. Medium is superseded by Large and Extra Large. Each level has an increasingly large price tag, but each come with more bells and whistles. TV channels available increase from 39 to 83 to 129 channels, and tags of up to £20.50. The broadband services (full virgin broadband review ) range from 18 to 30 pounds sterling and from 2MB to 10MB (which is about as fast as a speeding bullet give or take). Finally the phone packages cover a plethora of alternatives from £11 to £25 and from free weekend calls to unlimited talk any day of the week. These options are comparable with few other companies, with none others in this country providing a real 'quadplay' service. These services can be gained from a number of sources together, but Sky is the real contender along with BT in offering a more complete system. Sky offer 'see, speak, surf' packages, including TV, phone and internet. The three services will set you back £26 (plus £11 to keep a BT line, taking the real total to £37). This includes 128 channels, free evening and weekend calls and 8MB broadband with a 40GB limit. The equivalent Virgin Media package would cost more, but would have unlimited downloads and no BT line requirement. BT has just introduced their new BT Vision system, a film download service that it yet unlike a TV provision system, but is likely to develop into this in the coming years. From BT therefore, you can pick up broadband, phone and mobile. For 18.99 a month you can get BT Total Broadband, which includes free evening and weekend phone calls (with BT Broadband Talk), however line rental is not included. BT provides standard mobile contracts, similar to those you may see down at your local High Street phone shop, but also has BT Fusion. This is a WiFi mobile service which when within reach of your BT Home Hub acts like your home phone, and can surf the internet at lightning speed as it uses your home connection rather than a WAP/GPRS-style connection. My advice? Choose Virgin for a package that encompasses all of the services into one tasty bite size morsel. The morsel is of course the single bill you receive monthly from Virgin - this is one of their key selling points. Sky still has power over some of the key channels (though the courts will settle this), and has an attractive package for those who don't need a new snazzy mobile. BT is reliable although basic, but this familiar provider will attract many. Virgin is the new kid on the block; sometimes he wins. We await the Ofcom investigation into pay TV that may shake up the whole industry.
Staff editor, Broadband Section, March 2007 |
