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Telewest Broadband (formerly Telewest Communications) is one of the two major cable companies in the United Kingdom. Its cable network is the second largest in the UK (after NTL) and covers several areas of the United Kingdom. On this cable network, Telewest provides several residential services including:
- Talk Unlimited, Talk Mobile, Talk Evenings and Weekends and Talk Weekends telephony services. Existing customers may also take the 321 service until it is discontinued in summer 2005.
- A digital television service, formerly named Active Digital.
- Blueyonder (formerly Cable Internet), broadband Internet access via cable modems. Also available, dial-up internet services.
- An analogue cable TV service, which is due to be fully terminated in 2007.
- "Teleport" A Video on Demand service, which is being rolled across the UK As of 2005 (you can find out when you get the new service by typing in your postcode at Telewest's official site).
Future services include:
Telewest also provides extensive business telephony and data network services that provide a significant portion of its revenue streams, and carrier services to other telcos.
Telewest has gone through a lot of troubles recently due to its reputation for poor customer service and the huge debts it created when constructing its cable network, acquiring other cable companies and assets. In 2004 Telewest re-structured its balance sheet by swapping its unsecured debt for 98.5% of its shares. Shares were then consolidated and delisted from London. Major Telewest shareholders included Huff and Liberty Media (run by cable tycoon John Malone).
Since then, the company has emerged from financial restructuring and is listed on the NASDAQ.
It also owns former Deutsche Telekom company Eurobell, a cable company in Devon and Cornwall, which is fully integrated into the company now and Flextech a content provider (TV Channels) like UKTV.
Telewest passes approximately 4.2 million homes. blueyonder speeds offered are 512 kbit/s, 1 Mbit/s, 2 Mbit/s and 4 Mbit/s with prices ranging from around £14.99 per month to £50 per month.
Merger with NTL
Since late 2003 there has been discussion of a merger between Telewest and NTL, the UK's other, and largest, main cable operator. Thanks to their geographically different areas NTL and Telewest have co-operated in the past, such as directing potential customers who are outside their own areas.
On October 4, 2005, NTL and Telewest agreed a $6billion merger between the two companies. As a result of this deal, the UK cable industry will be dominated by a single supplier with only a couple of tiny independent cable operators remaining, such as WightCable (covering the Isle Of Wight) & Kingston Communications (covering the Kingston-upon-Hull area). The merger is viewed as an overly positive move to help cable compete against Sky Digital in the premium television market, and against BT (and BT provided ADSL services) in the voice telephone and broadband markets. It is unclear at present about Flextech. The company is expected to be called 'UK Cable' but no names have been confirmed as yet.
Blueyonder bandwidth upgrade
In August 2005, Blueyonder announced that starting in September they will be upgrading their service. The 512kb service will increase in speed to 2Mb, the 1Mb service will increase to 4Mb, and the 2Mb and 4Mb services will both increase to 10Mb. The pricing will be as follows:
2Mb - £9.99 per month [When ordered online]
4Mb - £24.99 per month [£19.99 for the first three months]
10Mb - £35.00 per month
The service is currently 'uncapped', which means that usage is unlimited; no extra charges are payable, no matter how much you download. However, this may change with the NTL merger, as NTL do have caps on their broadband internet service.
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