[5] In April 2000 Telewest merged with Flextech,[6] and in November extended its cable network with the acquisition of Eurobell, taking the total number of homes past 4.9 million.

[4] Initially, Cabletel acquired local cable franchises covering Guildford, Northern Ireland and parts of Central Scotland and South Wales.

[9] It sold ADSL broadband services through BT landlines to those living outside areas served by NTL's cable network and also offered subscription-based and subscription-free dial-up Internet access.

Sir Richard Branson reportedly expressed confidence that a restructured deal could go ahead, and in January 2006 NTL increased its offer to £961 million (372p per share).

[16] BSkyB effectively blocked the merger on 17 November 2006 by controversially buying a 17.9% stake in ITV plc,[17] a move that attracted anger from NTL shareholder Richard Branson,[18] and an investigation from media and telecoms regulator Ofcom.

[19] On 6 December 2006 NTL announced that it had complained to the Office of Fair Trading about BSkyB's move, and would withdraw its attempt to buy ITV plc, stating it did not believe it could make a deal on favourable terms.

On 2 March 2007, the National Consumer Council accused Sky and Virgin of "behaving like children" and stated that it would consider whether or not to raise a super-complaint against them "that will help to knock heads together" by the end of that month.

[26] On 12 April 2007, Virgin Media filed a legal case in the High Court against BSkyB under the UK Competition Act 1998 and Article 82 of the EC Treaty.

As part of the agreements, both Sky and Virgin Media agreed to terminate all High Court proceedings against each other relating to the carriage of their respective basic channels.

[34] On 3 February 2014, Virgin Media acquired Smallworld Fibre, a cable provider based in North West England and Western Scotland, for an undisclosed fee.

[45] On 7 May 2020, Liberty Global reached an agreement with Telefónica to merge their UK businesses, Virgin Media and O2, in a deal worth £31bn, subject to regulatory approval by the Competition and Markets Authority.

[51][52] Ofcom tested typical speeds of broadband services provided by most ISPs in the UK, including BSkyB, BT, Tiscali, AOL, TalkTalk, Plusnet, O2 and Orange.

On 11 March 2010, Virgin Media announced a six-month trial using telephone poles to deliver 50 Mbit/s broadband and TV services to the Berkshire village of Woolhampton.

[57] Virgin Media identified more than one million homes in parts of the UK that could benefit from deployment over telephone poles, without the need for government subsidy.

[58] On 7 October 2010, Ofcom ordered BT to open up its fibre-optic network to competing broadband providers to help drive forward the rollout of high-speed internet services in the UK.

[64] On 11 November 2013, Virgin Media announced its 152 Mbit/s downstream broadband service, featuring 12 Mbit/s upstream rates, which started rolling out to customers from 28 February 2014.

[79] Sometime after this Virgin Media changed their policy again due to further feedback from customers, and they now state on their website that no matter what broadband package users have taken, they will not be subject to any bandwidth throttling.

Other users will only be able to access a limited amount of free content on the TfL portal, with full mobile internet services offered on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Virgin TV ranks as the UK's largest provider of on-demand content, with over 3 million Video on Demand (VoD) customers and as of October 2011[update] over 6,500 hours of programming.

On 20 July 2010, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced they would review BSkyB's acquisition of Virgin Media Television to judge whether it posed any competition concerns in the UK.

Virgin Media owned Sit-up Ltd, a UK-based broadcaster of home shopping television channels, as a joint venture from its launch in 2000 and in full from May 2005.

In 2011 Virgin Media Pioneers launched the Control Shift Campaign[100] which polled over 1,600 young aspiring entrepreneurs on changes the government could make to help them create new businesses.

[citation needed] Virgin Media launched in February 2007, with a public relations event and expensive advertising campaign covering major UK television channels, newspapers and billboards.

Television advertising featured actress Uma Thurman, comedian Ruby Wax, and actors Samuel L. Jackson, Marc Warren, and David Tennant.

On 2 April 2008, The Daily Telegraph reported that Virgin Media would be beginning a trial to take action against subscribers who are illegally downloading copyrighted material from internet Peer-to-peer (P2P) services.

[122] In July 2008, the BBC reported that 800 Virgin Media customers who the BPI claim are sharing copyrighted files were sent warning letters in envelopes marked "If you don't read this, your broadband connection could be disconnected".

[123] On 26 November 2009, it was revealed that Virgin Media would trial deep packet inspection technology to measure the level of illegal file sharing on its network.

The story was publicised on BBC's Watchdog and musician Mitch Benn created a song called "Virgin Bills Dead People" about it.

Ofcom also found it had reasonable grounds for believing Virgin had contravened another General Condition when it failed to publish on its website clear and up-to-date information about the ETCs payable when fixed term contracts are terminated.

In March 2020, it became known that the Virgin Media marketing database accommodating the personal details (phone numbers, home and email addresses) of 900,000 users was left unsecured for 10 months.