In North America, the best prices, rebates and packages are only available to new customers while customer loyalty is rewarded with rate hikes.

In the United Kingdom, Virgin Media handles things differently, offering its best new packages and deals first to current customers before they become available to the public at large.

This week, the cable operator introduced two discounted “quad-play” bundles of broadband, mobile, television, and home phone service at prices that are unbelievably low by North American standards.

• The $59.40 Big Bang bundle provides 100Mbps broadband, a Virgin Media TiVo, home phone service, and Virgin Mobile service with unlimited talk/text and 250MB of data;
• The $84.88 Big Kahuna delivers 152Mbps broadband, a Virgin Media TiVo with a 230 TV channel package, home phone service, and Virgin Mobile service with unlimited talk/text and 250MB of data.

“Our fantastic new bundles deliver unprecedented value as standard,” said Dana Strong, chief operating officer of Virgin Media. “For the first time, households will be able to get the best broadband together with the UK’s best value mobile SIM, as part of a bundle perfectly tailored to the customer’s needs.”

Virgin Media will introduce other packages in the near future and is resetting its standard broadband speed offering to 50Mbps. Customers with 30Mbps will be upgraded to 50Mbps, 60Mbps customers will soon get 100Mbps, and 120Mbps customers will be boosted to 152Mbps — all at no additional charge.

The new bundles come with an 18-month contract and do not include the usual BT line rental charge for telephone service that most landline customers in Britain already pay, regardless of provider, which costs an extra $27.15 a month.

Customers who don’t want mobile service with Virgin will be given a further discount, as the price chart below shows: