The enterprise arm of Virgin Media led the company in revenue growth during the first quarter, bringing in £170 million, up £11 million from the same quarter last year.

Virgin Media Business (VMB) revenue grew at 7.1%, outstripping growth from mobile and cable services to consumers, which both grew by less than 2% from 2011 to 2012. Overall, the companies revenue grew by 2.4% to £1 billion, with VMB’s revenue growth accounting for 47% of the total.

Within VMB, revenue from selling data and services to retail businesses was the strongest performer, up 22% to £79.8 million on the year, "reflecting our successful strategy of focusing on higher-margin data revenue and increasing demand for our data products," Virgin said.

In contrast, wholesale data revenue was down 13.6% to £36.3 million, a plunge that Virgin attributed to "non-recurring fees relating to a single contract".

"Voice revenue," the company said, "was down 3.9% to £37.4m, reflecting the continued structural decline in voice telephony."

Virgin cited recent contract and framework wins as a signals of its broader success, including its selection for the provision of Wi-Fi at 120 London Underground stations, and its inclusion on the government’s Public Services Network (PSN) Connectivity Framework.

Virgin also mentioned a contract with global property consultancy Knight Frank for the implementation of a high-speed network to 60 office locations across the UK.

VMB started working with hosting provider Savvis in September last year to offer customers virtual private data centre services. Ovum analyst David Molony said the move targeted smaller business who typically wouldn’t deal with Savvis directly. "Savvis’ customers are typically multi-national corporations," he said. "If you are a small business, Savvis probably isn’t going to talk to you directly."