Virgin Media Limited is a British company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are in Hook, Hampshire. Since 2013, Virgin Media has been a subsidiary of Liberty Global plc, an international television and telecommunications company. The company was previously listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market and London Stock Exchange. Virgin Media is not a sister company of Virgin Mobile USA, which is owned by Sprint Corporation.
The company was formed in March 2006 by the merger of NTL and Telewest, which created NTL:Telewest. In July 2006, the company purchased Virgin Mobile UK, creating the first "quadruple-play" media company in the United Kingdom, offering television, internet, mobile phone and fixed-line telephone services. In November 2006, the company signed a deal with Sir Richard Branson to license the Virgin brand for the combined business. All of the company's consumer services were rebranded under the Virgin Media name in February 2007.Virgin Media owns and operates its own fibre-optic cable network in the United Kingdom, although currently their optical fibre network does not reach the customer premises, rather they connect to a street cabinet (called Fibre to the Cabinet or FTTC). As of 31 December 2012, it had a total of approximately 4.8 million cable customers, of whom around 3.79 million were supplied with its television services (Virgin TV), around 4.2 million with broadband internet services and around 4.1 million with fixed-line telephony services. At the same date, it had around 3 million mobile telephony customers. Virgin Media competes primarily in broadband with Sky, BT Group and TalkTalk, and in mobile with EE, O2, Vodafone and Three.