Virgin Media reports increase in contract mobile customers

 

Pay monthly Virgin Mobile customers overtake pre-payers for the first time

Virgin Media’s financial results show that its mobile contract customer base gained record numbers in the three months of 2011 - and increased by 26% during the year overall, to 1.5million customers.

The number of new contract customers, 102,500 between September and December, is nearly twice the number who joined Virgin Mobile in the final three months of the previous year.

Virtually all new customers were from cable homes, meaning that 15% of Virgin Media’s cable customer base now has at least one Virgin Mobile contract - up a third on the total at the start of the year. Adding the number of cable customers who have a Virgin Media pay-as-you-go mobile means 20% of its cable customers now have some form of Virgin Mobile service too, which still leaves room for significant growth among the remaining 80% of its customer base.

However, it wasn’t all good news for Virgin Mobile. Strong contract mobile growth was offset by a 19% decline in pre-pay services, contributing to a 1.3% fall in revenue in 2011. The pay-as-you-go decline and contract surge means that, for the first time, Virgin Media has more contract customers than pre-pay customers.

Neil Berkett, chief executive officer of Virgin Media, said: “We are successfully building contract mobile sales into cable homes and Virgin Media Business ended the year strongly as an increasingly important and growing contributor to the group.”

Virgin Media also reported a 14.5% rise in quad-play business - where a household takes broadband, home phone, TV and a mobile phone service from the provider - increasing its quad-play customer base to 697,000 by the end of the year.

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