Today, Sir Richard Branson held an event in London's Covent Garden market to launch his latest venture.

Last year he bought a stake in cable TV and phone company NTL. NTL had been suffering in the highly competitive telephone market, and struggling against the might of BSkyB and Freeview in the home TV market. Branson agreed to a merger between Virgin Mobile and NTL and the deal gave him the largest single shareholding.

Today the combined business was rebranded as Virgin Media and will offer TV, Broadband, Home telephone and Mobile telephone services.

The question is how potent is Richard Branson's magic pixie dust? Virgin is a powerful brand, he's a smart guy, but he's facing some very big challenges with this deal.

I did a quick straw poll to find out general opinion among friends and colleagues about NTL's service, and anyone I found who had been a customer didn't have much good to say about them, and a few had some quite angry things to say. A quick search on Google reveals even more people who "hate NTL". So can Branson's charm and reputation rescue such a big company that has gone so badly wrong. Is a rebrand going to help? What else will he need to do to fix

This will be a very interesting test of the power of an accomplished entrepreneur over a huge organisation with big problems. Will he turn the whole thing around, or simply tarnish the reputation of Virgin Mobile - and perhaps his own?

If he pulls this one off he truly will be a great entrepreneur. But if it doesn't work, I'll still have to admire him for trying such a bold move.