Service should come before content

Virgin Media’s announcement last week that it will launch a new entertainment channel on Freeview and over its own residential broadband network appears to be worrying analysts.

They argue that it might be better for Virgin Media to make peace with Sky and resume offering that company’s core channels as part of its subscription package. That may be wishful thinking. The firms’ dispute over renewal fees, which has rudely interrupted Virgin subscribers’ access to such hit shows as 24 and Lost, looks unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

In fact, it looks like Virgin Media is tired of getting mad with Sky, and is now looking to get even. But how to get even with Sky? I used to think the best way would be to hack into the satellites used by Sky and somehow fire their thrusters to make them dive into the Indian Ocean. But maybe such an option, like the plotlines in Lost, is too far-fetched – and rather unfair to the other firms that use the Astra satellites.

Sky moved to compete with NTL in the TV-over-broadband market in late 2005, when it acquired ISP Easynet. That looked to be a great move, since Easynet was one of the few ISPs rolling out ADSL2+ 24Mbit/s connectivity. The advantage Virgin Media has is that you don’t need to be close to the local exchange to get decent broadband speeds.

If only the Virgin Media catchphrase in its recent advertisements – “If you can, you should” – had been backed up by the support desk behind its offer, I think it would have cleaned up. In fact, it still could, since Virgin Media already has the technology to lift everybody to 20Mbit/s speeds.

I also remember seeing a demo in early 2006 of an NTL trial connection with downstream speeds of 48Mbit/s and upstream ones of 18Mbit/s involving an Ericsson VDSL2 Digital Subscriber Line Access Module and a Broadcom VDSL2 modem. OK, rolling that out would probably require a fair amount of backhaul capacity upgrades, but I think the phrase “who dares wins” applies here.

Many hoped that the NTL/Telewest merger with Virgin Media would cause memories of NTL’s woeful customer service to quickly fade. But helpdesk problems persist, although to be fair Virgin Media is not alone in offering underwhelming support. While there are web sites that rank ISPs in order of network performance, I don’t know of any that grade helpdesk performance. This is unfortunate, as I’d like to think that a top-class helpdesk would be a bigger asset to the “quad-play” merchants like Virgin Media, than being able to offer far-fetched TV dramas.