Report Claims Virgin Media O2 UK Set to Outsource IT to Tata in Forthcoming Deal
A new report has claimed that broadband and mobile giant Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) are reportedly in the process of reaching a new agreement with India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which is allegedly said to be worth around £750m over 10-years. The move could see the telecoms provider outsourcing some of their IT, such as in application management and infrastructure services.
According to the report on Telco Titans (paywall), the as yet unconfirmed move is being done at the direction of co-owners Telefónica, which recently set out a new five-year strategic plan (here). The latter included a desire to modernise IT systems and processes “externally“, which is where Tata could come into play. But a portion of the deal for VMO2 is also said to include ‘new work‘ for the business.
At present there are a lot of unknowns about all this and what the new agreement, if it is indeed signed, will deliver. The report indicates that a formal announcement of the deal is expected in the coming weeks (early New Year). VMO2 declined to comment when ISPreview asked, although the operator did inform us that it had no plans to move IT jobs from the UK to India or any other country, and that any such speculation would be unsubstantiated and misleading.
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We should point out that VMO2 already work with TCS as part of an enterprise software integration contract, which was announced back in 2023. The UK is TCS’s second-largest market after the USA and they’re currently in the process of expanding their UK based workforce to create 5,000 new jobs, although the timeframe for this seems to be unclear.
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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Yet another company outsourcing! How many staff are at risk with this new move?
I interviewed with VM 6 years ago.The interviewer begged me for a job as their network was such a crapfest. I noped out, but this can only make it worse. Thank Dog BRSK came to my area.
Oh brilliant going to be even harder to understand them. Going to get hit with more lies be made out to be racist when you don’t understand them or they don’t understand you. I’m Scottish it’s hard enough for people to understand. I mean they got my memorable word wrong cause guy didn’t understand this is shocking from virgin. Plus I need a job. Give me a job virgin
One hopeless company outsources to another hopeless company. I can’t see how this could possibly go wrong.
I wonder if they’ve had a serious chat to other TCS customers? Works OK for about six months when the initial (pretty good) tech transfer team are around, they then vanish to the next victim, along with the remains of the TUPE’d former staff and an ever changing bunch of clueless numpties struggle to distinguish arse from elbow. But that’s Standard Operating Procedure in this game…
Did they not see what happened to M&S
And some others, as can be seen from searches on “the register”
This is why people shouldn’t support companies that don’t employ within the country they serve
Really… nothing will get better but far worse is set to come. So will they partner with infosys and palantir??
This is a win win for the alt nets.
Its not the outsourcing itself that’s the issue, but TCS? Has everyone forgotten M&S, Harrods, Jaguar, et, al?
They will never learn, India in itself is a huge source of scams from data leaks, and these type of deals often dont work out as a positive for the business as it interrupts work flows.
That worked so well for Marks & Spencer recently that they got cyber attacked and put them offline for months!!!
India’s growing closeness with the Putin regime should leave doubt that UK businesses must review the risks of outsourcing to Indian businesses.
India has always been close to Russia, this is nothing new. But this business plan will result in a gargantuan increase in scamming. But the back door hand outs in Parliament do not care.
No idea if ‘back door hand out’ means some kind of corruption but mostly UK trying to keep India happy because we need more trade with them. Same with China. We need trade and most of all we need their money sloshing through our financial services industry and into our assets to ensure their prices don’t reflect that most of our population are broke.
The UK’s population and politicians chose this in the 2010s.
Businesses will have to continue to make these decisions themselves. Government is unlikely to get involved. The likely next one has more chance of supporting the UK cosying up with Putin so zero succour in prospect there.
All pretty much what you’d expect from an indebted, unproductive, embittered, ageing nation of 70 million running on ignorance, denial, insecurity, nostalgia and collective narcissism.
India has a history of engagement with Russia and the former Soviet Bloc. However, recent announcements around agreements between the two show that these ties are growing deeper. These ties should be raising alrams regarding the level of risk associated with businesses, governments and NGOs outsourcing operations and granting access on their systems toIndian businesses.
@Polish Poler:
The UK government signed an agreement with India in July of this year that allows Indian businesses to bring employees into the UK market.
@Polish Poler:
Telfonica is driving these reductions in employment costs. The decisions have all been made in the second half of this year.
@Polish Poler: @Mark:
“All pretty much what you’d expect from an indebted, unproductive, embittered, ageing nation of 70 million running on ignorance, denial, insecurity, nostalgia and collective narcissism”
Where are the facts in that statement?
Simple solution, vote with your feet. If people refuse to use companies that outsource, especially abroad, they will get the message or go bust. O2/Virgin has been a mess for years, I can’t see how this will help them, unless they are having a nostalgic NTL moment….
Rather than blame the businesses for outsourcing, you might instead consider objecting to the government’s ever-increasing regulation and tax take that is forcing the hands of businesses.
Nothing to do with the current government. Was happening well before the current government took power. It’s mostly about seeking short term profit to pump up the stock price and in turn the value of CxO stock incentives.
Still, don’t let a minor thing like facts get in the way of trying to blame the government for a trend that’s been ongoing for a couple of decades and in this case is triggered not by anything to do with the business itself but the whims of their Spanish co-owner: a company with many issues of its own, none of them related to the UK government.
Maybe try blaming those that deregulated to the extent that companies now routinely borrow not to invest in their businesses but to buy back their own stock to make their CxOs more money.
@Polish Poler:
The current government is adding more layers of costs and is forcing businesses to make these kinds of decisions.
O2 has already outsourced theirs to India and it is diabolical. Great friendly native English speakers when they want to sell you something, but as soon as you’re locked in you’re stuck trying to use hand signals and flash cards to explain what you need help with. VM was a joke before, O2 is a joke now, VMO2 is a joke. I paid to leave my VM and O2 contracts early and haven’t looked back.
Agree. When O2 was not Telefonica or VMO2, the customer service was great, in my experience. Quick answering and clearly people who could sort things out.
VMO2 would have outsourced regardless of gov taxes, it’s that sort of company. It’s no longer a British company so it wouldn’t appear to care about jobs in UK going. Companies won’t realise until outsourcing and AI mean significant numbers of people don’t earn and therefore buy their goods or services. AI has yet to impact, but it’s coming as it matures….