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About LinkBacksRead more.50-50 joint venture will create a major rival to BT. Deal is valued at £31.4 billion.
Read more.50-50 joint venture will create a major rival to BT. Deal is valued at £31.4 billion.
Ahhh we have Virgin media and o2 contracts
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Beardy and O2. Hmmm..... I have to say it'd be nice to have something to give BT a kick. The problem is that I think they may end up competing on poor customer service rather than real products.
My thoughts exactly.Originally Posted by philehidiot
To be fair I've found them OK. Not great, not bad but thoroughly ok.
Better than quite a few others. TalkTalk cough, 3 cough
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
With what is going on around the airlines, maybe it is time to change the name away from Virgin? I am not sure if O2 is a strong enough brand for quad play services though.
o2 valued at 13 ish billion virgin at 18ish billion...
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Company value does not equate to strength of brand perception.o2 valued at 13 ish billion virgin at 18ish billion...
it sure doesn't but also has some weight...
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
I feel like a Sky and Three tie up has to be in the offing at some point.
hope not. Three aren't too bad. Sky really really are and you know which corporate structure will win in that merger!
re Virgin and O2 - I'm surprised at this. How is that not loss of competition? Historically virgin have offered a different option to O2 irrespective of the network they piggy-back on, so that is reduced consumer choice and loss of competition. If two different companies condense to one company there is less choice of contract, rates etc. Virgin historically have proven to be far more competitive than the network brands although that has diminished in recent years. Take away valid competitors of any size and the big boys can easily price hike. How is that a good thing exactly?
Let face it we're on a rush to merge down to 3 or 4 big players and maybe a few niche players. Its great from a price point (at least until we drop down to the last 3 but rubbish from a quality of service point of view with the rush to the bottom. It also a joke to consider 'competition' when you need more than one cable connecting to your property to get real competition.
This, I fear, is the truth.
The agreement does seem ridiculously quick, given the first announcement of the talks had them stating that there is no guarantee that they'll come to a deal. But perhaps that's just something they had to say to cover themselves against the shareholders.
I don't really think it's less competition.
Virgin is piggybacking off EE, as you say. However you spin it, we have four mobile networks in the UK. Given that we almost lost that previously when 3 and O2 were talking about merging, I think this might be a better way round the problem.
As long as OFCOM keep on top of making switching easy (and they've done a hell of a lot in that space over the last few years), it could actually end up being more competitive than before.
Right now BT is the only player that can truly offer broadband, TV and mobile in the same package - because they have infrastructure in each area.
Virgin has its cable network for broadband and TV, but no mobile - they're reliant on BT for that.
Vodafone has some broadband (via OpenReach) and mobile (admittedly no TV of their own).
Sky has broadband (again via OpenReach) and TV, but no mobile of their own.
If Virgin and O2 merge, and Sky combined with Three, then you've got four players who can have meaningful competition with BT. To my mind, that has to be preferable to say Three and O2 merging.
Been a Virgin Media fibre broadband and TV customer with no issues at all, The free upgrade in speed from 100MB/s to 150mb/s was awesome and not sure why they get dissed so much. Yes, their customer service can suck but that pretty much goes for most of these big companies...I hear the same complaints for them all. They are all big enough and dont really care about their customers.
Anyway this will be a good thing for the UK.
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