Virgin Media O2 See Broadband Customers Fall by 16.7k as UK FTTP Build Slows
The latest Q4 2025 results from Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) have just been published and reveal that their gigabit broadband network increased its UK coverage by 115,100 premises in the quarter (down from 139k in Q3), while related customers fell to total 5,687,600 (down by -16.7k in Q4 vs +60.8k in Q3). But their mobile base grew and 5G outdoor population coverage hit 87%.
The results confirm that Virgin Media and nexfibre’s combined UK broadband network now reaches a total of 18,790,200 Homes Serviceable (up from 18,675,100 in Q3). As before, the vast majority of the new quarterly network build is from nexfibre’s full fibre lines (accounts for over 2.5m premises of the total coverage), although the recent impact of Telefonica’s strategic review has disrupted their plans (here and here).
The results reveal that a total of 8.3 million Virgin Media and nexfibre premises (footprint) are now covered by FTTP lines (XGS-PON and RFOG), which is up from nearly 8m in Q3. This figure also factors in Virgin Media’s ongoing upgrade of existing Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) areas to FTTP (i.e. they’re aiming to convert all of Virgin’s existing HFC and RFOG lines to XGS-PON by 2028).
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Finally, a tiny portion of the quarterly nexfibre build figures (shown below) may also include infill deployments from Virgin Media itself, which usually takes place on sites for existing property developments (i.e. the legacy of long contracts with housing developers for new build homes). But otherwise, the Q4 deployment has clearly slowed. We expect another sharp fall in nexfibre builds come Q1 2026, since no major new roll-out beyond the current coverage plan has been confirmed, yet.
Just for context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally established the £4.5bn nexfibre joint venture in 2022 (here), which originally aimed to deploy an open access full fibre (FTTP) network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT served by Virgin Media’s own network of 16m+ premises.
Nexfibre Rollout Progress
Q4 2025 = 115,100 Premises
Q3 2025 = 139,300 Premises
Q2 2025 = 114,900 Premises
Q1 2025 = 165,000 Premises
Q4 2024 = 485,500 Premises
Q3 2024 = 281,100 Premises
Q2 2024 = 295,300 Premises
Q1 2024 = 194,000 Premises
Q4 2023 = c.299,000 Premises
Q3 2023 = 250,800 Premises
Q2 2023 = 175,500 Premises
Q1 2023 = 107,800 Premises
Q4 2022 = 24,000 Premises
Elsewhere, Virgin Media has long stopped giving any solid figures for their Pay TV (video) base, which often happens when a base is in decline. But their mobile base has grown, albeit primarily due to their wholesale base (i.e. MVNOs like Tesco Mobile, Sky Mobile, giffgaff etc.). On the flip side, O2’s contracted mobile base suffered a net reduction of 164,800 in Q4 “primarily due to [the] October price rise announcement“.
VMO2 Q4 2025 UK Customer (Connection) Figures
5,687,600 Fixed Broadband – (down from 5,704,300 in Q3)
46,739,900 Mobile inc. Wholesale – (up from 46,584,600)
On the financial front, VMO2 reported total revenue of £2,556.9m in Q4 2025, which is up slightly from £2,549.3m last quarter. The operator added that it had invested more than £2 billion into its network and services during 2025.
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Lutz Schüler, CEO of VMO2, said:
“Against a tough market backdrop we met our full year guidance, with revenue and profitability growth and improved fixed trading momentum throughout the second half of the year.
Our core strategy of targeted investment, amounting to more than £2 billion across the year, and a focus on fixing fundamentals for customers has delivered real results. Our customer service transformation saw a consistent reduction in complaints levels; we are well on our way to being the clear scaled fibre challenger to Openreach; we maintain a leading mobile wholesale market position; and we have the UK’s largest 5G Standalone network, with O2 recently named as the most improved network in Europe.
While we expect challenging market conditions to continue in 2026, we are well positioned to seize the right opportunities in each of our business areas – consumer, B2B and wholesale – and the foundations we’re putting in place today will help to build long-term customer trust and fuel future profitability and cash generation.”
Despite the challenges, VMO2 remain one to watch during 2026. For example, the imminent launch of O2 Satellite is the first of a new breed of mobile connectivity products, which could shake up how we think about network coverage. O2 has also expanded their spectrum holdings over the past year, not least by acquiring some from Vodafone, as well as 800MHz of 26GHz spectrum and 1000MHz of 40GHz spectrum through Ofcom’s recent auctions. All of that could serve to give their mobile network and services a much-needed boost, both in busy urban areas and the remotest of rural locations.
Lest we also forget all that recent talk about VMO2 and nexfibre’s parents moving to potentially acquire Netomnia’s alternative broadband network (here), which would be one way to mildly boost the coverage of their national full fibre network and to disrupt rivals from being able to build a truly scale-competitor. But CityFibre are still trying to come up with an attractive counter-offer, and it’s plausible that the competition regulator may raise concerns over any deal with VMO2’s parents.
The other question mark now is over what will happen to those Virgin Media engineers who had previously been focused on building out nexfibre’s network. In theory, VMO2 could re-task them toward the XGS-PON upgrade programme or perhaps find a way to continue the nexfibre build, although there may also be some redundancies if they don’t. Time will tell.
The next thing to watch will be the effectiveness of nexfibre and VMO2’s wholesale drive on consumer fixed line services. The operators really need to be able to make a wholesale product that’s competitive and can thus attract third-party ISPs that aren’t merely extensions of their own group of companies, which has yet to happen. But any deal with Netomnia may also change matters, since they’d be inheriting a small wholesale base of ISPs.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Years ago, when ADSL was the norm, I said that if Virgin came here, I would have gone to them, broadband only.
Now, if they came here, and I had a choice of the Openreach network or Virgin, it would be a difficult choice. I would no doubt go for Openreach, due to the choice of providers. If nexfibre came here, which was going to happen, that would be a more difficult choice.
As it is now, with the altnet I am on, I have no plans to change, even if nexfibre did come here.
Hopefully VM don’t end up buying your Alt net.
I would have VM if I could. But their service is so bad, I can’t even get their sales team to put an order through. The computer says the property can’t be serviced, but the install team (who have come and looked) say it is and our neighbours have service so it obviously is. However, nobody seems to have the power to correct it and that prevents the sales team submitting the order.
Any decent salesperson would be chasing internally to get this resolved and add a new customer. But instead I’ve had to do the leg work, and after hours on the phone have given up.
In my view, the company culture is that people don’t care anymore. Perhaps the company has become too large.
“In my view, the company culture is that people don’t care anymore”. No doubt that is absolutely true. The management don’t care about the staff & I bet their call centres staff turnover is horrendous. No member of staff will get thanked for going the extra mile to sort customers problems out and will probably get a bollocking because they didn’t meet their quota of calls.
@BenInLondon
To be fair, there may not be much the sales person can do, for example, they may have one point of contact and that’s it.
We have a similar issue for certain scenarios where I work, where all we can do is ring CS and if they’re useless, there’s nothing we can do per my manager.
Here’s @Ad47uk with his daily internal conflict about which internet provider he is with on a completely unrelated news story. Absolute waffle no-one cares for. Do yourself a favour and get a therapist to help you heal with the internal alt-net vs openreach vs virgin debate.
“John Smith”; On reflection, I think it’s you that needs therapy.
This is an internet forum based on anyone from the public posting a comment. Don’t like it? Then tune out, like changing a TV channel. Nobody is going to censure what they want to write because of fear of upsetting some BT sycophants.
I probably would have gone with them ages ago if they offered a decent modem mode on the 5x.
It also doesn’t help that unlike with my parents they no longer seem to offer a ‘landline’ and the Stream boxes lack any local DVR, even though it would be similar cost minus that I’d pay to get faster upload speeds.