LONDON, August 6, 2001 (PRIMEZONE) -- NTL Incorporated (NYSE:NLI) (Nasdaq Europe:NTLI), the UK's leading broadband communications company, announced today that it has installed its one millionth digital television customer.
Thousands of NTL customers are using NTL's digital cable TV service to access interactive and e-mail features. Latest figures reveal that e-mail through digital cable TV continues to prove particularly popular with NTL customers receiving 1,000,000 e-mails on a monthly basis.
Interactive services are now available to 90% of NTL's digital subscribers. Of these, over 90% are accessing the interactive "walled garden" content on a monthly basis and as many as 59% are using the service at least once a week. Most popular interactive content includes news, games and sport. This weekly usage figure compares with 39% of Sky Digital subscribers using Open (source: BskyB).
NTL estimates that customers use the service 2.7 million times each week for an average of nine minutes per session. In total, 30 minutes are spent using NTL's interactive content per household per week.
Increasing numbers of NTL customers are also planning their TV viewing via the Electronic Programming Guide (EPG). 70% of NTL's digital TV subscribers use the EPG for up to 15 minutes each day. These high levels of EPG usage compare favorably with available figures on the viewing of ITV advertising, which is 18 minutes per day.
Stephen Carter, managing director of NTL, commenting on the one-millionth customer said, "This is another example of our business and the cable industry coming of age."
More on NTL
NTL offers a wide range of communications services to homes and business customers throughout the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Germany and Sweden. Over 20 million homes are located within the NTL's group franchise areas, covering major European cities including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, Stockholm, Geneva, Dublin, Manchester and Glasgow. NTL and its affiliates collectively serve over 8.4 million residential cable telephony and Internet customers, including approximately 1.5 million off-net Internet and telephony customers.
In the UK, over 11 million homes are located within NTL's fiber-optic broadband network, which covers nearly 50% of the UK including, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast. NTL now serves over 2.9 million, on-net residential, cable telephony and Internet customers and approximately 1.5 million off-net Internet and telephony customers, across the UK.
NTL has over 76,000 UK business customers, including Royal Bank of Scotland, Comet, AT&T and Orange. NTL offers a broad range of technologies and resources to provide complete multi-service solutions for businesses from large corporations to local companies.
NTL has a 40-year history in Broadcast TV and radio transmission and helped pioneer the technologies of the digital age. 22 million homes watch ITV, C4 and C5 thanks to NTL's broadcast transmitters.