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Following in the footsteps of Orange, O2 and Vodafone, Virgin have started a push to launch a broadband service to complement its mobile phone offering, however Richard Branson’s scheme involves the complete re-branding of NTL to Virgin Media – one of the biggest UK broadband providers.

Through an ambitious merger Virgin looks to be in prime position to take the converged services offerings by storm, being possibly the first to offer the fabled “quad-play” in a stated 18 month timeframe – mobile phone, home phone, broadband and TV in one package.

Starting February 2007, the UK cable company NTL is to re-launch as Virgin Media. This follows NTL Telewest’s £960m purchase of Virgin Mobile in July 2006. Sir Richard Branson is poised to launch Virgin Media on Valentines Day, offering a brand new set top box recorder and total UK population coverage by the middle of next year.

In September 2004, NTL acquired Virgin.net, the UK’s fifth largest Internet service provider. Virgin.net was originally started as a joint venture between NTL and the Virgin Media Group in 1996, and now has just under 600,000 subscribers. Under the original partnership, Virgin Media owned the controlling share of the company. Prior to that, NTL was created by the combination of the cable companies NTL and Telewest. The two spent their short histories fiercely competing against one another before deciding to merge.

Virgin isn’t the only company who has slid into the broadband market. O2 have become the third UK mobile operator to expand into fixed line broadband services. O2 bought broadband operator Be following in the footsteps of Orange who have teamed up with Wanadoo. Vodafone also plan to bundle broadband with its wireless services.

It isn’t only mobile phone networks who are interested in converged services as Sky have recently launched into broadband to add to their strong TV package with home phone and mobile phones rumoured to be on the horizon. Sky has continually pointed out the fact that NTL and Telewest’s cable networks cover just 55pc of the population therefore to counter this, Virgin Media, which has spent £5m trying to improve the cable groups’ poor customer service, will spend tens of millions of pounds to increase coverage.