Virgin Media O2 Notifies Some 300 UK Staff of Potential Redundancies
Several sources have informed ISPreview that broadband and mobile operator Virgin Media (O2) has today notified staff, specifically those in the Fixed Wholesale and Customer Delivery side of their business, that c.300 of them could be facing redundancy in the near future. The move follows a slowdown in the expansion of their full fibre (FTTP) network via nexfibre.
The move shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given the turbulent year that VMO2 has had, which was partly fuelled by the uncertainty that flowed from debt-strained Telefonica and the earlier move to launch a Strategic Review of their global business (here and here).
The fallout from that review has since resulted in a number of changes, such as nexfibre scaling-back their planned fibre deployment to reach just 2.5m premises by the end of 2025 and Virgin Media adopting a different approach to fixed wholesale access at the consumer level (here). Telefonica did recently outline their future strategy (here), but the exact plan for nexfibre’s build beyond 2025 remains uncertain.
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Just to recap. Nexfibre was first established in 2022 after Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners created the company as a new £4.5bn joint venture (here), which aimed to deploy an open access (wholesale) full fibre (FTTP) network to reach “up to” 7m UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT served by Virgin Media’s own network of 16m+ premises.
Redundancies
The latest development began to surface this morning, after several sources informed ISPreview that VMO2 had issued an internal announcement to staff within their Fixed Wholesale and Customer Delivery teams, which put around 300 of them at risk of possible redundancy.
A Virgin Media O2 spokesperson told ISPreview:
“After hitting a major milestone which saw us surpass 2.5 million homes for nexfibre, we continue to push ahead with a focused fibre rollout programme.
Our strategy to create the biggest fibre alternative to Openreach remains in place and on track, and to ensure we deliver on this strategy, we are proposing to make changes within some teams that would result in some exits.
We are having open and honest conversations directly with our people and employee representative groups on these proposals and will continue to support any impacted individuals throughout this process.”
However, VMO2 has informed us that this may not translate into the same number of roles being cut, as the hope is that it will be possible to map many of them into other roles. Nevertheless, there remains a lack of clarity over how all these changes will impact the timescale for achieving nexfibre’s original build target, although there’s been plenty of talk about complementing it with consolidation (example).
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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As of June 2020 my Virgin Media broadband broke down and for 27 months I was often left with broadband which was rebooting over 300 times a day. They came many times with new hubs. In October 2021 I developed pneumonia with sepsis. Due to the landline being connected straight to the hub our landline would only work sporadically.leaving me unable to have online appointments. Took 3 days for my husband to get an ambulance by the time I got to hospital I was already in stage 1 respiratory failure. I had no real apology from Virgin Media.
Is hard to believe what you are saying, as all vulnerable people have extra Ebul added for free as emergency land-line, and having disconnection 300 time day is impossible. Because virgin have system who detected this issues and book engineer straight away whiteout even to call them
Such a pity that mobile phones weren’t invented until after October 2021.
Also, 27 months? So you were out of contract for part of that and could have easily switched providers (or possibly renewed with Virgin – despite their alleged poor performance).
They seem to make enough money overcharging for services, especially with people that are out of contract that don’t bother renewing and just pay it.
Don’t really know how they can be debt stained
Nexfibre built half on Banbury (South & West) in 2024. Their contractors EJC were surveying our estate in September 2024 but since then nothing. Mind you there are already 3 networks on the estate to varying degrees (Openreach, All Points Fibre & F&W/Hey Broadband).
I feel for the staff having this news, especially at the start of a New Year. Seems like they are still promoting people into new roles they may not be suitable for at the same time as announcing a load of job losses.
It is the latest in a long line of redundancies – my turn was a couple of years ago.
I do hope that they “support any individuals affected” is done in a better way than when I got my news.
Agreed on both points. It’s a real shame they seem to undervalue experience – the assumption seems to be “new people new ideas” but the past 5yrs have shown that’s just not working, or there is no real framework to support these changes.
The sooner the whole physical infrastructure moves to Nexfibre, the better. But I’m sure the financial liability is the reason that hasn’t happened yet.