Virgin Media O2 launched services in June 2021 as a JV between Liberty Global and Telefónica in the U.K
U.K. operator Virgin Media O2’s 5G network reached 800 towns and cities across the country as of the end of the third quarter of the year, the telco said in its earnings statement.
The telco said it remains on track to deliver 5G services to 50% of the U.K. population in 2023.
During the third quarter, Virgin Media O2 also said it had upgraded 4G capacity in more than 190,000 postcodes across the U.K.
In the mobile segment, the carrier recorded a total mobile net addition of 629,000 subscribers in the quarter, with increases across wholesale, IoT, prepaid and contract segments. The contract mobile base increased by 47,000 in Q3 to 16 million.
Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media O2, said: “This quarter has seen an increasingly challenging macroeconomic backdrop against which we continue to provide high speed and quality services whilst supporting our customers and people through these challenging times. Additionally, we accelerated our growth in profitability as our commercial momentum advanced and we continue to make strong progress on our three growth waves of expanding and upgrading our network, realization of synergies and digitalizing our business. Our converged offering combined with our improved understanding of our customer, through digitalization, is underpinning our development and customer-value proposition.”
“The third quarter has been one of strong strategic and operational progress supporting our delivery for the rest of the year and beyond. We have grown our mobile and fixed customer base, improved our product offering, hit a major convergence milestone and achieved another quarter of EBITDA growth. We reaffirm our 2022 guidance,” the executive added.
The telco’s overall revenues in the quarter amounted to £2.58 billion ($2.90 billion), almost flat year-on-year, while quarterly profits reached £677 million, up from £16.5 million in the year-ago quarter.
Total mobile revenues increased by 2.1% to £1.5 billion, with service revenues increasing 4.3%
Virgin Media O2 launched services in June 2021 as a joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica in the U.K.
Liberty Global and Telefonica had reached an agreement to merge their U.K. operations in a 50-50 joint venture in May of 2020. That same month, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decided to allow the proposed merger between mobile operator O2 and Virgin Media.
Earlier this year, Samsung Electronics and Virgin Media O2 announced they have successfully completed the deployment of multiple live 4G and 5G sites in the U.K.
Samsung said that the companies also completed the first 5G data call on Virgin Media O2’s commercial 5G network, using the sites.
In addition, these field tests demonstrated interoperability between Virgin Media O2’s 2G/3G/4G networks and Samsung’s latest 4G and 5G solutions, and validated use of Samsung’s Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) capabilities.
Samsung provided its latest network solutions for trials — including 4G radios, 5G Massive MIMO radios and baseband units. The Korean vendor explained that the solutions cover a wide range of Virgin Media O2’s spectrum holdings including 800MHz, 2.1GHz and 3.5GHz. Specifically, Samsung delivered its 5G 64T64R Massive MIMO radios for the 3.5GHz spectrum.
