NTL and Telewest are undecided on how to brand their unified cable operations, execs have admitted.

Simon Duffy, president and chief exec at NTL, told investors yesterday that both parties would be consulting on the new image during their pre-merger "collaborative phase".

"Clearly we do need to have a single brand across the whole company when we go live on day one in three to seven months time," he said. "We in NTL have done some work on that... but we haven't reached a conclusion because clearly we want to consult and evolve our new colleagues from Telewest on that."

He added: "We will need a brand but I don't want to say if it'll be a new brand or whether it'll be one of the existing names."