The effect of the two cable operators, NTL and Telewest, can also not be under-estimated.
Ultimately, the fate of Telewest is in the hands of its controlling shareholders, Microsoft and Liberty.
Telewest's network currently passes 4.9 million homes and it currently has 1.76 million households as customers.
NTL's independence also helped it in its struggle with its last remaining rival, Telewest.
The firm was created from the merger of NTL and Telewest, and Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Mobile.
BBC: Virgin Media in talks with John Malone's Liberty Global
Liberty's Telewest holding dates back more than ten years, to when the UK deregulated its telecom sector.
Microsoft will also get MediaOne's 29.9% stake in Telewest, strengthening its interest in the British cable industry.
In exchange Malone received UPC's Irish cable assets, a closer geographical match to his U.K. cable company, Telewest.
But the talks went slowly, partly because Telewest was hampered by its owners.
None of which made it any easier for Charles Burdick, a Telewest executive, to get on with the negotiations.
Speculation is rife that NTL will next make a bid for Telewest.
So earlier this year, Telewest announced that it was going with Liberate, even though Microsoft owns nearly a third of the company.
Before now both have needed a visit by technicians to wire up homes and get domestic computers authorised to use to Telewest network.
Telewest's self-install package does away with the need for a visit by one of the company's engineers and lets existing customers swiftly switch on a broadband service.
The self-install package uses wires to link set top box with the computers in customers' home, but eventually Telewest said it will provide wireless connectors to make installation even easier.
Having recently been pushed by Mr Malone into merging with Flextech, Liberty's European programming arm, Telewest is now expected to take on Chello's service, as a first outward sign of co-operation.
Cable firm NTL said in August it had 300, 000 high speed subscribers, while the UK's second cable operator, Telewest, claimed 192, 000 broadband customers in the higher band of 152 kilobits per second.
Emmy and Telewest award-winning set designer Eve Stewart understands this and indicated that filming in high-def presents new challenges with the likes that have not been seen since the advent of color television.
ENGADGET: High-def presenting new challenges to set designers HD
Unfortunately the companies did not move fast enough, and both NTL and Telewest, the companies that emerged out of the round of business failures, takeovers and forced mergers, were bankrupt by the end of the process.
Some reckon BSkyB is trying to protect its pay-TV business against the looming threat of television over Internet, including BT's forthcoming "Vision" IPTV product and the newly enlarged cable concern NTL, which has added rival Telewest and the cell provider Virgin Mobile.
It is possible that the price of bonds of the better telecoms firms, such as Telewest and Nextel, could double in the next two years even though they pay yields well in excess of 20%, a gain usually associated only with the best years of venture capital, not boring old bonds.
Some reckon BSkyB is trying to protect its pay-TV business against the looming threat of television over Internet, including BT (nyse: BT - news - people )'s forthcoming "Vision" IPTV product and the newly enlarged cable concern NTL (nasdaq: NTLI - news - people ), which has added rival Telewest and the cell provider Virgin Mobile.
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