Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK (VMO2) has today confirmed what we published yesterday (here), which is that, starting from March 2023, Virgin Mobile’s 3 million customers will begin being moved to O2’s own equivalent mobile plans with migrations taking place across 2023. The first customer letters about all this will go out next month.
The operator has also confirmed that all of their underlying mobile network traffic is now being run across the O2 network, with Virgin Mobile’s move away from Vodafone’s Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) platform being completed last year. This comes just a year and a half after Virgin Media and O2 merged in June 2021.
As part of this migration, Virgin Mobile’s customers can expect to receive unlimited texts and voice calls, and either double the data or “unlimited data” for the same amount each month – “no customers will see the cost of their plan rise as a result of this move,” said the operator (this of course does not stop the usual annual price hikes from occurring).
The operator claims that the move will “occur seamlessly and over the air for the vast majority of customers with no need to replace SIMs, port phone numbers or change billing dates or information,” although it’s worth noting that the word “vast majority“is not the same as”all“. Historically, such big migrations tend to throw up some problems when they occur.
Exact details of the changes and steps will be outlined to individual customers at least 30 days ahead of their migration taking place. Migrations will occur throughout the year, andby the end of 2023 all existing and newly joined Virgin Mobile customers will have been moved to O2 plans.”
Gareth Turpin, Chief Commercial Officer at Virgin Media O2, said:
“This is a major milestone moment for Virgin Media O2 as our Virgin Mobile customers start moving over to O2 plans, receiving added value and benefits on top. Our teams will guide customers through every step of the migration, and we’re laser focused on making sure this all occurs in the most hassle-free way possible. With all of our mobile brands now powered by the award-winning O2 network, we are making fantastic progress in our integration plans while continuing to deliver a range of knockout mobile services that cater for all needs.”
The change itself started to be spotted a few days ago after several of Virgin Mobile’s product pages were updated to include the following notice: “Virgin Media and O2 have joined forces so, at some point soon, you’ll be moving from a Virgin Mobile plan to an equivalent O2 plan.” The move caused some surprise because it had originally been expected that the Virgin Mobile brand, which has a long and moderately successful history in the MVNO market, would be retained.
However, much as we suggested yesterday, this seems to indicate that VMO2 are learning from BT and EE’s challenges with their own merger. BT initially tried to maintain its own BT Mobile brand, but over the past few years they’ve walked this back and if you try to join BT Mobile today then the products are all from EE. In taking this action, VMO2 are similarly centralizing mobile around O2’s branding, while still maintaining closely tied bundles (eg VOLT) with Virgin Media’s fixed line broadband, phone and TV products.