O2 UK Shifts Directly Managed Business Broadband Services to BT

Mobile operator O2 UK (Telefonica), which last month announced that their unbundled (LLU) wholesale fixed line broadband platform (formerly BE Wholesale) would be closed down at the end of February 2014 (here), has now confirmed that the remaining business services will also be switched to BT.

Regular readers might recall that O2 initially decided to retain the O2Wholesale platform, which supplies several ISPs, after selling off their consumer fixed line broadband and phone customers (including BE Broadband subscribers) to BSkyB (Sky Broadband) for £180 million earlier this year (here).

But for whatever reason they couldn’t make it work and instead opted to close down their wholesale division, which caused various problems for ISPs that make use of the platform. One possible reason for this move might be because customers on the platform had begun moving to rival services of their own accord (example).

However this still left O2 with a bunch of directly managed business broadband customers and the operator has now confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that these will shortly be shifted over to a similar BT managed solution.

A Spokesperson for O2 told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We are closing wholesale and won’t be migrating any wholesale or reseller circuits to BT. We are moving the directly managed business services to BT.”

So far this only appears to apply to their ADSL using business connections (O2 also has various EFM and fibre circuits). The timeline for all this also appears to mirror the O2 Wholesale timetable, which suggests that related customers can expect to be moved by around the end of February 2014.