Virgin Media’s on-demand service, along with offering a host of rental movies and free music and TV entertainment shows, also provides a catch-up service for popular shows on channels including Living, Virgin1, BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Revealing that the number of homes now utilising the service had increased by 250,000 from 2009 to reach 2.1 million in 2010, they attributed much of the rise to the increasing quality of entertainment programmes. With UK shows including Skins and Shameless, along with U.S phenomenon Glee attracting 8 million users to 4oD in March alone, EastEnders Live meanwhile found 250,000 views through the Virgin Media service.

Speaking of the growth in figures the company’s executive director of digital entertainment, Cindy Rose, said “Watching TV on demand is now part of the nations’ daily viewing habits, with millions of people tuning into the TV programmes they love when they want to watch them.” She added that recent news from the BBC that 120 million visits a month were being noted on the iPlayer service spelled a positive future for their online on-demand service to be launched later this year.

It is a natural step for Virgin who already offer an extensive on-demand service through their TV package, allowing customers access to a range of free content including music, catch-up television and on-demand content, in addition to rentable movies. Already collaborating with Filmflex for their TV entertainment, the firm has now revealed that the duo will be taking their relationship to the internet by launching their new online movie service next month.

From May 6th, Virgin Media Online Movies will begin showing hundreds of titles, including District 9, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Twilight Sage: New Moon. Speaking of the move, executive director for Virgin Media’s commercial, TV and online content, Alex Green, said “Virgin Media already offers the UK’s leading movies on demand TV service and we wanted to bring the same high-quality, easy-to-use experience to film fans online. Virgin Media Online Movies will help visitors discover and enjoy a whole world of film and we’ll continue to develop the service by adding download functionality, even more titles and a great choice of HD films to the line-up.”

In addition he explained that after user’s set up an account they can access the service from any number of computers. Price plans will be similar to those already existing on their movie on-demand TV service at around £3.99 per title, though rental time will increase to 48hrs rather than their TV rental’s 24 hr time limit.

Increasing its ambition to take on the broadband market after last month’s merger with T-Mobile, which created a firm with almost 30 million mobile phone customers, Orange will now use BT’s network in a bid to gain market share in the broadband sector. And whilst increasing the experience for the 840,000 customers that already utilise the broadband service, the deal could also look set to allow T-Mobile to bring broadband pricing plans to consumers.

It is an important move for the company which has seen declining numbers of broadband customers over recent years, falling below one million for the first time in 2009. Though its falling figures had brought about discussions of abandoning the market entirely, the new deal seals Orange’s fate into what looks to be a very promising future in broadband. Speaking of the decision, vice president of strategy at Orange, Bruno Duarte, said “We are not satisfied with where we stand with broadband, as our customer base is declining and our performance is poor. But we need to remain in fixed-line broadband so decided to fundamentally change what we are doing.”

However, whilst many companies go on the attack to poach customers on other networks, Virgin Media instead looks to hold onto their current market share, increasing their attractiveness to new consumers whilst retaining existing contract holders. Creating a “quadplay” bundle that consists of mobile, landline, TV and internet packages, the company have reduced the high street average tariff by £5, or offered a shorter contract length in a move that is certainly likely to be welcomed by existing consumers.

Virgin Media’s upcoming contract for the new HTC Desire retails on the high street for £30 a month which includes unlimited internet, texts and 800 minutes of call time for a 24 month period. However, those existing customers who are looking to upgrade will note significant differences in the options offered to them, including a reduction in price by £5 including a new HTC phone, or paying the high street deal but opting for an 18 month contract. Virgin Media is to also roll this offer out to other handsets in addition, including products such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

In March 2000 NTL, which was later bought by Virgin Media, supplied the first ever broadband in the UK to Mark Bush, saving him the costly £300 dial-up connection that he was having to maintain each month. And whilst broadband remained too expensive for many, the technological advance quickly established itself across the UK as the best way of connecting to the internet, immortalising itself into history and eventually causing politicians to incorporate supply measures into legislation.

Speaking of broadband’s short decade of history within Britain, Mr Bush explained “It was pretty impressive in the early days, having the whole pipe to myself. When I first signed up I thought broadband would be something that would help with my gaming.” He added that the internet had also proved important as a family tool, saying “Traditionally there would have been a generation gap – a 47 year old Dad would have little in common with a 17 year old son and 14 year old daughter. But we have the internet in common… without it I would probably see less of my kids.”

Announcing that the service would become available before the end of 2010, the executive director of TV and Online for Virgin, Alex Green, said “We’ll be launching this year our player. This will deliver a super high quality click to watch experience for our subscribers to see their favourite on demand shows online and on their mobile. We’re determined to get the experience right in terms of viewing quality and usability and we’re taking advantage of the way technology has developed in the past couple of years to do that.”

Adding that entertainment would provide the “highest quality experience”, Mr Green’s comments have led to a number of experts believing that the Virgin Media Player could well incorporate HD function. “It…allows us to build on our recent slew of HD TV announcements like ITV Eurosport, Discovery, E4, Film 4 and others,” Mr Green said, “We have a strong HD line-up and our onus is to offer the highest quality experience on demand on TV, online and on mobile.”

Meanwhile, with Virgin Media’s TiVo enabled set top box following a similar time line, it is believed that the two products may launch simultaneously to make as much of a market splash as possible.

Whilst only trialling the scheme for six months, initial proposals are due to start in Woolhampton, a Berkshire village, offering broadband speeds of up to 50 megabits per second (Mbps). Explaining that the trial would enable Virgin to “understand the possibilities of aerial deployment”, chief executive officer Neil Berkett added that if it proved successful it could be determined to be the future of providing a “new way to extend next generation broadband services.”

The scheme comes after the government pledged that every resident in the country would have access to broadband speeds of 2Mbps by 2012 with ultra fast speeds being implemented by 2017. Meanwhile recent global surveys have also discovered that the majority of people now believe internet access to be a human right. Announcing that they were to fund the process with £200m, the government added that approximately 15per cent of homes in Britain, typically in rural areas, still did not have access to even 2Mbps broadband.

And Virgin Media’s new trials could offer a realistic option to solving the problem. Whilst most fibre-optic networks are run underground, and some companies have utilised sewer systems, Virgin’s attempts will be the first using telegraph poles as a support network.

Speaking of the decision to roll out the faster networks, chief executive of Virgin Media Neil Berkett explained “There is nothing we can’t do with our fibre-optic cable network, and the upcoming launch of our flagship 100Mbps service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience.” He added that their ability to use cables instead of ADSL lines would allow high speeds to download albums of music in five seconds.

Currently with 4.1million customers and having increased consumer base by 46,000 in the last three months, Virgin Media have not yet stated the regions in which they intend to roll out the faster speeds. Meanwhile, BT who have 25per cent more users than Virgin and are also increasing more quickly with 102,000 subscribers added in the past three months minimised the announcement, saying “Virgin are playing catch-up as customers are already using 100Mbps over BT’s network. It is fair to say we are bigger than them and we are growing faster too.” However, latest figures for Virgin show a year upon year leap of 3.3per cent in revenue, growing to £980m, with average customer price increase coming in at 5.8per cent.

As HD services become increasingly present on a wide range of cable services, competition has led companies to gather more and more hi-def content to attract customers. And Virgin is no different, explaining that customers with Eurosport HD would be able to enjoy the French Open Tennis, Tour de France, the World Touring Car Championships, Athletics European Championships and World Superbike rounds all in the highest possible clarity.

Whilst they still lag considerably behind Sky’s range of HD channels, the announcement brings Virgin’s hi-def count to eight channels. Their executive director of digital entertainment Cindy Rose explained “We’re really excited about the spring launch of Eurosport HD and the wider roll-out of several new HD channels for our customers in the coming months. With HD ready TVs now common in UK homes, the combination of HD channels as well as our pioneering TV on Demand service gives Virgin TV customers a huge range of HD programming with the unique flexibility to enjoy HD content whenever they want, at the touch of a button.”

The new addition to the Virgin package will be available for free to existing XL customers, and will launch early in the spring ahead of a number of popular sporting occasions.

Designed by Detica, a monitoring firm, CView inspects data travelling on networks, discovering the file names by which it can asses the data’s legality. However, whilst Virgin Media said that the programme would not affect individuals’ privacy, Privacy Internationals head Alexander Hanff said that its use would break UK law. “Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) intercepting communications is a criminal offence regardless of what you do with the data,” he explained, adding that if the ISP went ahead with its use he would compile a criminal complaint against them.

As the government develops technology to identify online fraudsters, spokesman for Virgin Media Asam Ahmad explained that the software simply highlighted illegal traffic rather than point to specific individuals. Whilst Mr Ahmad confirmed that up to 40per cent of customers would be investigated without prior warning, ThinkBroadband’s editor Andrew Ferguson expressed that Virgin Media’s trial could recover useful statistics. “If Virgin can form a baseline for its ‘illegal’ P2P traffic, it can see how much effect any legislation has, and perhaps plan better for the letter forwarding side of things,” he explained, adding that they weren’t the first ISP to implement such schemes as BT had been doing it for years.