Cable company ntl:Telewest is readying to launch the UK's first quad-play deal, offering TV, broadband, landline and mobile phone services in one £40 package.
To help build its base of subscribers, the company is also offering free TV to every new fixed-line sign up in what looks to be a full-frontal assault on the increasingly successful free digital TV service Freeview.
The news comes six months after NTL made its offer to take over Virgin Mobile (the acquisition completed on July 4) and four months after its took over Telewest to create what it claimed was UK's largest provider of residential broadband and a leading provider of triple play services - for which it charges £30 per month.
The free TV service includes no premium channels and is in standard definition. However, the company's Telewest division is one of only two companies in the UK providing high-def TV (Sky's the other one) and customers can, the company says, upgrade to higher-level TV packages anytime they want. In the case of customers who are on the NTL cable network, though, high-def won't be available until some unannounced time next year.
However, the free TV offer and the quad-play service are coming this quarter according to ntl:Telewest and with "no hidden installation or connection charges". All orders, the company promises, will be "provisioned quickly".
Customers will be able to choose any two products from the company’s quad-play portfolio for £20 a month or any three for £30. One downside - at the outset, invoicing for the services looks like it might be a messy affair, though the company is promises it will be "moving to unified billing over time ".
Commenting, ntl:Telewest CEO Steve Burch said,
"In this quarter,
we’ll be introducing a vast array of new offers. Our
intention is to provide consumers with genuine flexibility and choice,
at knock-out value: unlike our competitors, whose offers are focused on
driving take-up of a particular service, we’re going to let
the
consumer decide what combination of products they want. We’re
confident
that the variety and flexibility of our consumer offers will put us in
a strong position versus our competitors".
He added,
"Our free TV offer is also
hugely significant. Why pay upfront for a
Freeview box without access to the most advanced TV features, when with
us you’ll pay nothing upfront and get access to it all?"
Among the background information that the company supplied to the media are some well known facts, such as the size of its base of installed residential customers (over five million) and the number of homes it's potentially able to service (12m - 50 per cent of UK households).
But what a lot of people won't know is that ntl:Telewest’s content division, Flextech Television, owns six entertainment channels - LIVINGtv, LIVINGtv 2, Bravo, Challenge, Trouble and Ftn and is also a 50 per cent partner in UKTV which offers ten channels including UKTV Gold, UKTV Drama and UKTV History.
In addition, ntl:Telewest owns four shopping channels - price-drop TV, bid tv, speed auction tv and screenshop.
Thoughts on quad-play and the way in which the whole TV and comms landscape seems to be transforming this year with new services from a wide range of big players? We'd love to share them in this thread in the HEXUS.community.
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HEXUS.community :: discussion thread about this article
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