@Jay
Why do you enclose the "important points" with the quote marks? That just reminded me of the Lasers being described by Dr. Evil in an Austin Powers movie.
netstat -b simply lists all the open connections your computer has. As I browse El Reg, my computer must connect to its servers in order to download the web pages. Similarly, if I sign into MSN, Skype, connect to a Ventrilo server, you name it, the connection is made and is listed by the netstat command.
I don't have VM Broadband, nor do I have VIrgin Media's PC guard installed, yet this is still the case. It's expected behaviour and is not fishy. If you're thinking about Phorm analysing the websites you go to, there's no software on your PC which you can uninstall to remove that; Virgin Media watch the traffic flowing off their network further up in their network, for that.
If it weren't for Phorm, i'd like the Virgin Media method. As has been said, it's a consumer grade product; they state "unlimited" as, still, you get charged no more, no matter how much you download. Sure, it slows down at the peak times, and they do clearly define their traffic shaping policy, but fundamentally they won't cut you off altogether at a defined amount of usage.