NTL Reports Growing Losses Despite Digital Take-Up

NTL reported losses of $616.5m (£410.3m) in its second quarter results today, an increase of 77% compared to the same period in 1999. However revenues have increased year-on-year to more than $3.25bn (£2.16bn) over the three-month period to the end of June, partly thanks to the acquisition of Cable & Wireless (CWC) (see Government Clears NTL/CWC Merger).

This quarter has also seen the launch of NTLworld, an unmetered internet service. The advertising for this caused a backlog in demand which led to a temporary halt in the marketing campaign (see NTL Pulls Advertising Of Net Service). Since its April debut (see NTL Launches Free Internet Service Ahead Of Schedule) the company has received more than 622,000 requests for the service.

NTL’s customer base for digital television, a service launched in May this year (see NTL Launches Digital Cable Services), has been swelled by the addition of CWC customers and now stands at around 230,000. Earlier this week the company announced that it expected to reach its year-end target of 500,000 (see NTL Ends Second Quarter Nearly Half Way To Digital Subscriber Target).

Barclay Knapp, president and CEO of NTL described the free ISP and digital TV services as “key products” and went on to say, “We are also in a commercial trial of open web access on the Consumer Co [CWC] digital TV platform. Interactive service and open web access will be rolled out across all of ConsumerCo and NTL digital platforms beginning in September and October, respectively. We also recently began our aggressive rollout of cable modems which will gather steam in the remainder of the year. True video-on-demand is just around the corner – launching early in 2001.” He concluded that these services will drive NTL’s consumer business for the near future.

NTL: 01252 402 000