Cable stress, 3.0

Two days ago I was having a discussion with someone about the strain that some of the leveraged cable names (ONO, KDG, Numericable, Ziggo, Virgin Media) are likely to come under in the new financing paradigm. Lo and behold, Virgin, to its credit, has taken the bull by the horns and asked to amend the terms on its senior debt, pushing amortization out to 2012, and paying a nice step-up for the privilege. That's a pretty strong statement on what they expect the credit markets to be like for the next three years. I wouldn't be counting on much participation from Virgin in the FTTH sweepstakes in the foreseeable future...