The news comes after the UK’s largest cable company dropped plans to launch a live sports channel called British Sport - a decision based on the realisation that it could not compete with other sports broadcasters such as ITV and BSkyB.
Yesterday NTL saw losses widen to £721m ($1.1bn/B1.2bn) from £528m ($772m/B861m) for the nine months to September 30 because of the growing interest costs incurred from its £12bn ($18bn/B20bn) debt mountain.
But the US-listed company beat its earnings target and saw revenues rise by two percent to £647m ($946m/B1.1bn) with core earnings rising by 15 percent to £130m ($190m/B212m), compared with the previous quarter.
Subscriber numbers also grew, with digital TV customer numbers climbing 20 percent to 1.14m and broadband internet users rising 73 percent to 79,000. The network has set itself a new target of 1.25m digital TV subscribers and 100,000 broadband subscribers by the end of the calendar year 2001.
