Virgin Media and O2 Set to Merge UK Customer Communities Together

Broadband ISP Virgin Media and mobile operator O2 are about to begin an impactful change as part of their previous merger, which will bring their once entirely separate community discussion forums together for the first time. The operators also plan to move to a “new platform” during the process as their “agreement with the current provider is ending“.

Most of the major broadband and mobile operators run customer communities, which are often a useful place to find help and advice. In fact, we tend to view it as a big plus when telecoms providers are able to provide their customers with such a venue, although some prefer not to give their customers a place to engage and raise problems (e.g. Vodafone had an excellent forum until they unceremoniously nuked it last spring).

Similarly, both Virgin Media (here) and O2 (here) have long run their own community forums. O2 doesn’t appear to have changed their forum for a long time, while the last time Virgin Media upgraded their own forum occurred a year ago (here), when they switched from using the older Khoros ‘Classic’ platform over to the modern ‘Aurora’ one (call us old-fashioned, but we much preferred the look and feel of the old one).

However, the network operators are both now starting the process of changing platform again, but this time it’s more than a mere upgrade. The platform itself is being changed (no details have been provided on the new one) and, more significantly, they intend to merge both of their communities together at the same time (posts, stats, member accounts etc.).

VMO2’s Joint Community Statement

Just a heads‑up that the community will have some downtime at the end of the month. We’re moving to a new platform as our agreement with the current provider is ending. This migration will take a little while as we move everything over. The community will switch to read‑only next week before going offline for a bit.

We’re also taking this opportunity to bring the Virgin Media and O2 communities together. Our aim is to merge as much as we can – posts, stats, member accounts, the lot.

Thanks so much for everything you’ve contributed so far. From me and the whole community team, we really appreciate it – and we’ll see you on the other side!

Anybody who has any experience of trying to do what O2 and Virgin Media are about to attempt with such a large database of historic customer content will know that it can be a nightmare to pull off smoothly. Complex database migrations and mergers of this type rarely go without problems, to say the least. This perhaps explains why neither operator has specified how long the downtime will last, because they can’t be sure themselves.

At present, it’s not known precisely what the new platform will look like or if everything will be placed under a new website, but we should have those answers soon.