BT has launched a High Court case against Virgin Media (VMO2), which it accuses of having migrated customers away from their EE based Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) platform (Virgin Mobile) before an agreement had been concluded. The broadband ISP and mobile giant is reportedly seeking £24.6m in compensation.
Just for context. At the end of 2019 Virgin Media signed a 5-year deal with Vodafone to run their MVNO platform, which effectively ended their long-running supplier deal with EE (here). Under the plan, Virgin Mobile’s services – back then reflecting c.3 million customers – would start to transition to Vodafone’s platform from the end of 2021, although some 5G (mobile broadband) services were introduced before that.
Since then, both Virgin Media and O2 have merged into VMO2, with the new joint company having already given Vodafone notice to cancel the new MVNO agreement – naturally, they’d now want to be able to fully harness O2’s platform. But that’s another story and today we’re focused on the prior MVNO agreement to use EE’s national mobile network.
According to Broadband TV News, BT is accusing VMO2 of having breached the terms of their MVNO agreement by allowing non-5G customers (ie 4G and older users) to be migrated away from EE’s network and on to O2 and Vodafone based platforms before its contract had formally expired. BT says it warned Virgin about this on multiple occasions, but the operator allegedly refused to carry out any checks.
A BT Spokesperson said:
“BT is taking legal action against Virgin Media with respect to a breach of an MVNO agreement Virgin Media had with EE. It would be inappropriate to comment further due to the ongoing legal proceedings.”
However, VMO2 contends that they’ve “always complied with the terms of our former mobile agreement with BT“, with the operator planning to “robustly defend” themselves. The case could have implications for other MVNO agreements in the future, where operators might sometimes use different methods to start migrating users ahead of time and without prior agreement.