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The CEO of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, has clarified his own recent remarks and revealed that Virgin Media and O2’s (VMO2) plan for opening up their fixed broadband ISP network in the UK to wholesale (here) – via a new entity (NetCo) – is now “stopped” and not merely “on a pause” as initially indicated.
In case anybody has forgotten. The joint ventured between Liberty Global and Telefonica – VMO2 – initially appeared to be progressing normally at the start of this year and was on course to open up their network to rival ISPs via the new NetCo in H1 2025 (here).
On top of that, the semi-separate £4.5bn nexfibre project by Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners (here) was also making progress on its mission, which aimed to extend FTTP broadband coverage to 5 million premises by the end of 2026 – focused on areas beyond Virgin Media’s existing network.
However, as previously reported (here), the nexfibre build recently suffered a big hit after debt stricten JV partner Telefonica launched a Strategic Review. Not only did this appear to pause Virgin Media’s (O2) own plans for opening up their existing broadband network to wholesale via a new NetCo company (here), but it also caused nexfibre to scale-back its FTTP coverage target for 2025 to 2.5 million premises (here) – roughly 500k premises less than originally expected.
The strategic review thus cast a cloud of significant uncertainty over the future of VMO2 in the UK and this week’s results announcement (here) provided no further updates. But this week also saw Telefonica publish its latest results too, and the company’s boss initially appeared to confirm that the NetCo might still be progressing (credits to Olaf for the tip).
Marc Thomas Murtra Millar told investors:
“So with regards to the future regarding data centres or opportunities like that, that is part, of course, of the strategic review. You mentioned the NetCo, the U.K. NetCo is not paused, and it’s not part of the strategic review. That is a decision we made and announced, and that has to do with our industrial strategy and industrial way of working.
The suggestion that the NetCo is not paused or part of the Strategic Review seemed to conflict with earlier indications, but also gave the impression that it was still progressing. Unfortunately, Murtra later clarified his remarks by telling Reuters that the NetCo “project is stopped” and not merely paused (i.e. scrapped).
Prior to all this, VMO2 had been attempting to raise £1bn to support their NetCo plans (here), but that seemed to be struggling to reach a final agreement and of course now it never will. Furthermore, despite VMO2’s plans to go wholesale being telegraphed for long in advance of the NetCo itself being formalised, the project had struggled to attract any support from major rival broadband ISPs.
Potential ISP partners would have been looking to be treated fairly (wholesale agreements), which is always a tricky thing to balance vs the desire by some for exclusivity agreements, and Virgin Media’s mix of XGS-PON / RFoG based full fibre (FTTP) and its legacy DOCSIS 3.1 (Hybrid Fibre Coax) network also made for an awkward combination. FTTP will eventually replace all of that, but not until 2028 and this too may now be in doubt.
At the same time the NetCo would need to be competitive with the dedicated wholesale platforms from larger providers like CityFibre and the regulated Openreach, while also making it all as easy to harness as possible. One potential issue here is that Virgin Media’s own retail broadband pricing, particularly its post contract rates, are still relatively high compared to a lot of other FTTP providers and that might not have worked as well in today’s competitive market – a hard thing for VMO2 to balance (retail vs wholesale).
Quite where VMO2 and their parents go from here is unclear and subject to the ongoing Strategic Review. Liberty Global are due to publish their own results today, which may help to shed some more light over the issue. VMO2 itself declined to comment on this report, but did say that they continue to deploy fibre at scale and now have a fibre footprint passing more than 7 million premises with 18.5m all able to access gigabit speeds and above (combined VMO2 and nexfibre networks).