Virgin Media owner and Telefonica eye new fibre giant to cover 7m UK households
Liberty Global and Telefonica are in discussions with potential financial partners to create a new network venture in the UK.
The joint venture would target up to 7m premises in Britain to provide them with full fibre by the end of 2027. Liberty Global said it aims to expand the coverage of Virgin Media O2 with the project, as the telecoms group will commit to being an anchor tenant of the new network.
It comes after Virgin Media merged with rival O2 in June 2021 in a joint venture which was orchestrated by owners Liberty Global and Telefonica. It seems that the parent companies have further expansion plans in store for the merged telecoms giant.
Virgin Media O2 has gotten off to a sluggish start, with its full year results for 2021 signalling slow momentum. Transaction revenue declined by 1.2 per cent year on year to £10.4bn, tumbling by 0.7 per cent in the final quarter to stand at £2.7bn.
Despite the setback, the network still managed to double profits to £18.3m and experienced strong demand – adding 142,000 customers to its network last year to bring total fixed contracts to 5.8m.
Lutz Schüler, chief executive of Virgin Media O2, said: “In a historic year for our business, which saw the completion of the UK’s largest ever telecoms merger, we stayed focused and finished 2021 on a high.”
“As part of our mission to upgrade the UK, we expanded our 5G coverage, completed our gigabit rollout as promised, and we now plan to extend our footprint to ~23m premises through a new fibre venture being set up by our shareholders,” Schüler added.
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