O2 & Virgin Media To Merge

I think O2 is the better and more widespread brand, Virgin Media has very little to do with Virgin or Richard Branson anymore, although they still have a time-limited branding contract (it's 30 years, but still). Also the O2 name is fully owned by Telefonica (50% of the proposed joint venture), the name is more widespread outside of cabled areas and have more stores (which will be useful for future cable network expansion plans) and sponsored venues than what Virgin has, it would be common sense to use the O2 brand to save money, than to a brand (e.g. Virgin) that they don't technically own.

Also O2 has the most customers, who may want to take advantage out of a cable TV/Broadband package with their mobile contracts or pay monthly SIM, the branding continuity would makes things easier from a business perspective and from a marketing perspective it would look like a new service to existing O2 customers. When Telefonica bought O2 they could of easily changed the name to Movistar, but they chose not to, because the O2 name was already established in the UK.

For Virgin Media operations, they would only have to change a few stores (or close them), change the branding on the vans, website, office, the EPG/Modem software, VOD etc.

The only other alternative would be to change to a completely different brand.

When T-Mobile and Orange merged in the UK they originally had the intention of retaining both brands, but that didn't last long. The joint venture was called 'Everything Everywhere', and soon the two brands became EE. They've remained as such after BT's purchase.

I suspect that the Virgin Media brand may become toxic as the other businesses using the Virgin name start to fail. Wouldn't it also save money if they ended the branding agreement? As others have said, O2 is an international brand. O2 Media has a nice ring to it. I can't see Sky Mobile wanting to sit as an MVNO on a network branded as Virgin Media.

It'll be interesting to see how the 'Virgin' brand hold up post Covid. It had already lost it's sheen somewhat over the last decade or so but right now it's practically toxic.

O2 is now only a brand in the UK and Germany, plus a small off-shoot in Spain. It used to have a presence in loads of places, including Ireland, but alas no more.

Virgin is almost certainly now the stronger brand overall, but the licensing will eventually expire. Probably best to cut ties and rebrand, especially as Virgin Mobile customers will be moved from EE to the vastly inferior O2....

I’d say it’s pretty tarnished now. Virgin Atlantic is pretty unlikely to survive, and that’s after they allowed FlyBe to go under. Of course we’ve had Virgin Care try to sue the NHS as well in recent years. Branson may not own or directly run everything with the Virgin name on it any more but he’s been vilified by many because of all this.

That’s the biggest problem with the Virgin name. It used to be a name you could ‘trust’, whereas now the products are owned by anyone who end up creating any such public image and it all becomes a bit messy. But the public persona is still “Richard Branson runs Virgin”.

Would Virgin Media Mobile customers be moved to O2’s network then, or will the transfer to Vodafone deal continue?

That's the issue for me, I'm on a mobile contact until 2022, which by next year I should be using Vodafone's network instead of EE's. For me, Vodafone while not as good as EE is otherwise comparable. O2 is over congested (similar to '3') locally, so don't fancy being stuck on an inferior network until the end of my contract.

What an odd name. That makes me think of movies, and therefore a rival to Netflix or Sky Cinema instead of a phone company.

The press release states that Virgin Mobile will be moved to the O2 network, so looks like they’ll pay off Vodafone and stop their deal.

It’ll be interesting to see what Sky do with their mobile network as that piggybacks off O2...

They're a Spanish company. The Spanish word for mobile is movil. (Vs are pronounced like Bs in Spanish) so it's a bit of a play on words.

Granted they have borrowed the star bit from English - their word is estrella - but I guess moviestrella sounds like a van selling beer.

In my view, Branson made an error by not forcing better standards on to VM as a part of the licensing arrangement.


One of the things the Virgin brand was once associated with was superior standards of customer care, which is not something VM or their forerunner NTL have ever been well regarded for.

The customer service standards at Virgin Mobile in particular have fallen very hard in the time since the merger.

I think Virgin Media is a big part of the 'fall from grace' of the Virgin brand.

They've definitely got worse since Liberty took over. They really need to bite the bullet and scrap their internal on-demand system that just pales in comparison to others. They should use the money / bandwidth / whatever saved to either improve their internet, reduce contention, or do a deal with the other the top companies like netflix to offer a *discounted* subscription, not just part of your bill.

I find it odd that they replaced the TiVo with the vastly superior and well specced V6, yet continue to choose the cheap junk routers