Virgin Mobile and ntl to get into bed
At long last, the marriage we have all been waiting for. Well, not quite, but there are reports that ntl and Virgin are about to announce a deal. The Register is reporting that ntl has offered £900 million for Virgin Mobile after Virgin turned an earlier offer of £817 million.
What does this mean for you? It will allow ntl to be the first company in the UK to offer “quad play”. Quad play is a bundle of digital television, home phone, broadband and mobile products. You can receive one bill and have only one company to deal with for all four products. As with other bundles, ntl are likely to offer the bundled products at a lower cost than if you took all four separately.
Bundling is a win-win situation for both provider and customer. It gives the provider the chance to earn extra revenue from one customer and it gives the customer a discount from individual products. Telewest and ntl already offer “triple play” bundles, which is digital television, home phone and broadband. Companies such as Toucan and TalkTalk offer home phone, broadband and mobile bundles.
Our advise to any customer is to look at their needs and investigate the bundle options as well as individual options. It is still often cheaper to take the lowest cost products from individual providers than it is to take a bundle.