Virgin Media, the major cable broadband supplier in the UK, at last, has something to cheer. The first ISP that launched the quadplay in the UK, Virgin Media, is reported to have checked the decline of its customer base from 70,000 to 31.000 as its financial report shows the numbers after the end of third quarter. According to a news feature published in the Times, the UK cable giant is slowly coming out of the hardtimes it is currently in, due to its legal dispute with BskyB over sharing digital TV channels of the respective companies. This development had also caused a sharp fall in the revenues of Virgin Media by £4.8 billion and the sacking of its CEO, Steve Burch for the same reason.

During the second quarter of this year, Virgin Media saw a sharp decline in its customer base as 70,000 customers migrated to other UK broadband suppliers, however, the current report of the ISP’s third quarter numbers indicate an improvement or even a remarkable comeback of the cable broadband provider whose total customers (including broadband and other services) make it the second largest ISP in the UK. Citigroup also predicts a growth of 45,000 customers for Virgin Media, during the fourth quarter although the company might loose 44,000 residential customers in its telecoms division.

Happy news for Virgin Media is its broadband division will add 60,000 new connections during this quarter and will be the thrust area where the ISP plans to bring innovations to boost its growth. During this year, we saw Virgin Media upgrading its broadband XL size package to ‘up to 20 Mbps’ and its testing of 50 Mbps service in selected places in the UK. Together with it, Virgin Media has announced some attractive, special offers like bundling broadband packages with its mobile service to bring down the monthly cost to affordable terms.

However, Virgin will have to face stiff competition with BskyB and O2, the new entrant to UK broadband to survive in UK broadband industry which has already showed a few signs of slow growth due to general customer dissatisfaction and the slow adoption of new technologies by UK ISPs when compared with North America or Asia Pacific region.