Virgin Media (VMED)

The quadruple play advantage - Virgin Media is the only UK firm offering a package deal of Broadband, cable TV, land line and mobile phone. In the long term this will be a huge advantage, as these communications tools are quickly becoming essential commodities to residents and businesses. What sets Virgin apart is its offering of mobile phone service in the package - other companies can give customers a triple play, but not all four services. Furthermore, as land line phones become obsolete and more customers use only their cell phones, Virgin will have the ability to adapt its bundle offerings to fit this need.

Due to the poor infrastructure in the UK the deployment of fiber is relatively expensive and BT is unlikely to deploy anything more than fibre to the curb and that means UK households are unlikely to get real FTTH. This means that VMED's broadband advantage with DOCSIS 3.0 and its future developments is likely to remain for some time.

The government will begin to check the power of competitor British Sky Broadcasting. On January 29, 2008 the government ruled that one of BSkyB's holdings was anticompetitive and against the public interest. More rulings in this vein will significantly help Virgin Media to overcome its greatest weakness - a lack of access to premium content. Also, as the company's balance sheet settles after its recent mergers and acquisitions, its debts will decrease and it will have the leverage to bid for broadcasting rights to future events, and in doing so it can undermine BSkyB's considerable content advantage.

Cable TV is becoming more attractive because of HDTV and on-demand. People want these quality products - and satellite service confers little to no advantage over cable in delivering HD and on-demand. Paid TV service, however, is now much more attractive than free digital TV because of these HD and on demand offerings. As more customers switch to pay-TV service to take advantage of these new developments, Virgin Media stands to benefit via new subscribers.