Virgin TV is a digital pay cable television service in the United Kingdom, owned by Liberty Global (50%) and Telefónica (50%) after the merger its UK businesses to form Virgin Media O2. Its origins date from NTL and Telewest, formerly two of the UK's largest cable operators, which merged on 6 March 2006. All NTL:Telewest services were rebranded as Virgin Media in February 2007. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin is the sole national cable TV provider in Great Britain. Currently about 51% of UK households have access to Virgin's network, which is independent from BT's Openreach network.
Virgin ranks as the UK's second-largest pay TV service, and the service is provided in conjunction with Virgin Media broadband and phone. As of Q3 2007, it had 3.6 million subscribers, compared to 8.2 million on its traditional rival Sky. As of 2009, Virgin's digital cable television currently uses the Nagravision 3 conditional access system. The service was fully digitalised in 2013.
