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The increase in customers is particularly pertinent as the company lost more than 26,000 customers over the same period last year.

High definition TV looks crucial to the company's continued success, with Q2 seeing HD customers increase by 79.7% to a total of 1.2 million.

The company added 28,100 broadband customers to take its total base to 4.21m, with more than 650,000 customers now subscribing to its 20Mbps and 50Mbps services, amounting to around 17% of its total broadband base.

The company also added 22,300 net new TV subscribers from its existing customer base, no doubt influenced by the company's heavy TV advertising and push to get punters to subscribe to HD.

Virgin now has around 3.7m digital TV subscribers, more than half of which are using Virgin's video-on-demand services.

There was improved performance in both mobile and business revenues and Neil Berkett, chief executive of Virgin Media, saw this as a key area of growth.

"Going forward," he said, "we'll continue to differentiate our propositions by proactively exploiting the advantages of our network and our mobile capability." In other words – that's the company's plan of attack against Sky.

Berkett is also said to be considering selling Virgin's 50% stake in pay-TV venture UKTV.

