Virgin Media O2 UK Appoints New COO and MD for Fixed Network Expansion
Broadband and mobile giant Virgin Media O2 has today announced that, as part of their efforts to reorganise and focus the company on a “customer-first, digital-first and converged mentality and mission that lays the ground for future growth“, they’ve appointed a new Chief Operating Officer (COO) and MD for Fixed Network Expansion.
Firstly, VMO2’s current COO, Jeff Dodds, has taken a CEO position at another company and thus Ulrik Bengtsson, the former William Hill CEO, has been appointed to replace him. Prior to this, Ulrik spent five years as CEO of Betsson Group and was the CEO of Viasat Sweden. The new COO will be responsible for improving customer experience and implementing key consumer digital initiatives across all of VMO2’s customer areas.
Next up we have Rob Evans, VMO2’s current Managing Director (MD) of Fixed Network Expansion, who is sadly having to leave the business due to health reasons. Julie Agnew has now been appointed to the role, after having covered this area on an interim basis since the start of the year.
Julie will be primarily focused on delivering the full fibre (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband rollout on behalf of Nexfibre, a joint venture established last year by Liberty Global, Telefonica and InfraVia Capital Partners. Virgin Media is the build supplier and anchor tenant of this network, which aims to rollout full fibre to at least 5 million more premises on a wholesale basis by 2026.
Julie previously held the role of CEO at Egg, which was launched in February 2022 by Liberty Global Ventures, the investment arm of Liberty Global, to offer consumers and businesses a range of de-carbonising technology solutions. Before this, she spent 20 years at Virgin Media, latterly as the Executive Director of Construction & Delivery, extending the reach of the company’s broadband network through its Project Lightning programme.
Lutz Schüler, CEO of VMO2, said:
“As Virgin Media O2 approaches two years as a joint business I’m extremely proud of the progress that we have made, and both Jeff and Rob have played a major part in this success, both before and after the merger. As we now look ahead to the next chapter, putting customers right at the heart of our decision making, accelerating our digital transformation activity and ramping up our network build engine, it’s fantastic to have Ulrik and Julie as part of our leadership team.
Ulrik brings extensive operational and digital knowledge to the table with a record of delivering transformational changes that create a better customer experience and service. Julie has been part of the Virgin Media and Liberty Global families for many years and knows the network and build landscape inside out.
I’d like to thank Jeff and Rob for their tireless work and many achievements over the years and look forward to building on the momentum Virgin Media O2 has generated to transform our business for future success.”
These changes come amid a wider transformation at VMO2 that reorganises and focuses the entire company on a customer-first, digital-first and converged mentality. Gareth Turpin now leads a single consumer commercial division focused on fixed, mobile and convergence growth and performance, while Kay Schwabedal now leads a division focused on digital transformation, product and value creation.
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 and Linkedin.
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Might do a tour of Nexfibre’s passed premises given they announced their plans in July of 2022 so plenty of time to get lots of fibre out there.
Done.
The words “customer first” and Virgin Media are rare bedfellows. Since VM have had awful customer service for many years on their existing network, and refused to either acknowledge that or do anything about it, I really can’t see that anything will change by either buying a few altnet assets, expanding PIA use, or building a few more bits of network.
As for “digital-first and converged mentality and mission”….sheesh, who writes this utter bilge?
This is a great comment. Accurate analysis.
Virgin Media need to invest fast in technology that will help deliver better customer experience is what I read through all the corporate babble. Unfortunately that in itself is so generic it could mean anything.
Or maybe the aroma of coffee is wafting?
Content is no longer a shoe in as IPTV is quick and easy to set up and can package up groups of other vendors.
Network is no longer a certain cash cow was OR’s FTTP is snapping at their heels never mind the mass of alt nets eating their lunch one bite at a time.
Since merger, wifi has got slower and slower, don’t even mention 5g in Clevedon Somerset. Reported to customer services they reported back saying had been sorted problems but not as good as before merger.
All I seem to hear from VMO2 is broadband, broadband, broadband.
No one seems to mention their abysmal phone network that seems to be lagging further and further behind all of their competitors
That’s because although on paper VMO2 was a merger of equals, in practice it’s a simple takeover of O2 by VM. So VM’s culture, VM’s way of doing things, VM’s attitude to customers. The merger was publicly promised to make recurring (ie annual) savings of £540m a year. If you assume that’s made up of 20% traffic connectivity charges for O2 (implying VM provide this for free), and 30% somehow delivered marketing and head office and support functions savings (although they’re still marketing as two distinct companies), then there’s still £270m of additional savings to find. Ultimately VMO2 need to cut O2’s costs, because VM themselves had already outsourced everything to the cheapest provider, usually those operating from burnt out skips refitted with a few seats and shared telephone line somewhere in the less salubrious parts of the third world.
As much as I am fan of Full Fibre I am on the Openreach network and ISP Vodafone but I would like to see Virgin Media use Full Fibre and do away with HFC hopefully that would end the misinformation because in virgin store they would say coaxial cable is fibre instead of saying we do use fibre but coax cable witch is copper coated steel the last mile. But having said that I would never be a Virgin customer because there always down.