UK cable company NTL has announced the launch of Broadband Plus. The premium broadband content bundle provides customers with easy access to a wide range of web-based content. The service is available to NTL's 600K and 1MB broadband customers for GBP 3.99 per month. It would cost around GBP 30 per month, if customers were to subscribe to all fifteen services individually.

Broadband Plus focuses on music, gaming and education content. It brings together 15 brands including Tweenies (provided by BBC Worldwide), MTV, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Freeloader, Game.Net, Music Choice, Time Tunnel, VidZone and Download 365 for the first time. The new service also features Espresso Education, a curriculum-based educational resource for primary school children, which includes video clips, interactive multimedia activities, and a special "Parents' Guide" to the national curriculum. Up until now this service has only been available in schools. Other Broadband Plus content partners will be added next year.

NTL will use Broadband Plus as an acquisition tool to attract new customers as well as encourage existing 150K broadband and dial-up customers to upgrade to its higher speed broadband services. An official release informs that customers signing up before 1 March 2004 will pay nothing for Broadband Plus for the first three months.

The release adds that there are over 2.6 million broadband connected homes in the UK.