A report from research group Datamonitor has indicated that the number of European households with Digital TV services will pass that of the UK by the end of this year.

Currently 100 million households in the US and Europe enjoy a Digital TV service. That number will rise to around 187 million by 2010.

The increase is partly helped by the switching off of the analogue signal in many European countries, including the UK. The European Commission would like the analogue signal to be switched off across all of the EU by 2012.

More information on the digital switchover.

Compare UK digital TV deals.

At long last Virgin has accepted an offer of £962 million from NTL for Virgin Mobile. This will create the UK’s first “quad play” provider offering home phone, digital TV, broadband and mobile products and is part of NTL’s vision of become a massive force in the telecommunications market. NTL recently merged with fellow cable provider Telewest. NTL will rebrand as Virgin, but only if Richard Branson is happy with improvements to NTL’s rather dodgy customer services. Virgin has a good name in terms of customer services and its focus is on keeping its customers happy. That attitude is likely to be forced on NTL in an attempt to bring NTL out of customer service hell. This is great news for existing NTL customers.

More info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4874694.stm

At long last, the marriage we have all been waiting for. Well, not quite, but there are reports that ntl and Virgin are about to announce a deal. The Register is reporting that ntl has offered £900 million for Virgin Mobile after Virgin turned an earlier offer of £817 million.

What does this mean for you? It will allow ntl to be the first company in the UK to offer “quad play”. Quad play is a bundle of digital television, home phone, broadband and mobile products. You can receive one bill and have only one company to deal with for all four products. As with other bundles, ntl are likely to offer the bundled products at a lower cost than if you took all four separately.

Bundling is a win-win situation for both provider and customer. It gives the provider the chance to earn extra revenue from one customer and it gives the customer a discount from individual products. Telewest and ntl already offer “triple play” bundles, which is digital television, home phone and broadband. Companies such as Toucan and TalkTalk offer home phone, broadband and mobile bundles.

Our advise to any customer is to look at their needs and investigate the bundle options as well as individual options. It is still often cheaper to take the lowest cost products from individual providers than it is to take a bundle.