Originally Posted by geogadget (Post 36099271)

Didn’t Virgin Mobile sign a deal with Vodafone a few months before the merger with O2?

Presumably something will be done when the Vodafone contract ends. In the meantime heaven knows what they will do, depends if they see any value in Virgin Mobile or not..

Originally Posted by geogadget (Post 36099271)

Didn’t Virgin Mobile sign a deal with Vodafone a few months before the merger with O2?

Presumably something will be done when the Vodafone contract ends. In the meantime heaven knows what they will do, depends if they see any value in Virgin Mobile or not..

Originally Posted by Pierre (Post 36099574)

I can only offer my opinion on this.

You are indeed correct VM did sign a five year deal with Vodafone in 2019. With services moving over to the Vodafone RAN in 2021. I don't know if the 5years runs from 2019 or 2021.

At the moment both Virgin and O2 are keeping their identities in the merger, so it is possible for Virgin Mobile to continue as a brand and move back on to the O2 RAN in 5 years.

Though I wouldn't expect that to happen, I believe in the intervening years, or at the end of the five, the company will rebrand again and lose the dual identity.

A which point all Mobile customers will be moved onto the same platform.

Originally Posted by vincerooney (Post 36101408)

so virgin media customers can now get o2 priority. its looking like virgin mobile is on its last legs....personally i hope its not soon. i get vodafone 5G in my area and o2 has no 5G in my area!

Originally Posted by Paul (Post 36101544)

Standing under a mast is the worst place to be.
The signal is designed to spread outwards, not downwards.

Originally Posted by Paul (Post 36101544)

Standing under a mast is the worst place to be.
The signal is designed to spread outwards, not downwards.

Originally Posted by BenMcr (Post 36101656)

Also unless you have exactly the same make and model of phone with two different SIMs, there is a whole other set of other variances to deal with.

Originally Posted by 1701-e (Post 36102111)

:)Just off the phone to VM and happy to increase data on all three sim cards for a price reduction in the black Friday deals. Happy to continue

Originally Posted by Paul (Post 36102124)

Existing Virgin Mobile customers are mostly still on EE (for 4G) or Vodaphone for 5G.
I believe new 4G customers go on Vodaphone now, and the rest will move to Vodaphone soon.

Originally Posted by vincerooney (Post 36102307)

The 5G in my area with o2 was awful so its definitely good to be with virgin mobile and vodafone. Not the strongest 5G signal but good enough for me!

Originally Posted by Itshim (Post 36113249)

Horses for course's O2 is great for 5g here and Vodafone for me is rubbish . Good to see virgin still breaks contracts left right and centre :erm: wonder why anyone would trust any contact they commit too. :shocked:

Originally Posted by Itshim (Post 36113251)

Completely understand but virgin seem to have track record of doing it

Originally Posted by nodrogd (Post 36113267)

The Vodafone termination has been coming for quite some time. It was hidden away in the Q2 2021 financial results that they were planning this last year

Originally Posted by Paul (Post 36113256)

As does any business when they need to.
.

Originally Posted by Hugh (Post 36113250)

Most contracts have "break" clauses, allowing early termination, with notice, of a business relationship - this is completely different from unilaterally ending a contract.

Originally Posted by Pierre (Post 36113340)

Did anyone on here seriously think that when VM announced they were to merge with O2 that Virgin Mobile would be a going concern?

Ditching Virgin Mobile (or at the very least moving it - but I think they'll ditch it) was probably one of the biggest synergies and cost saving of the whole deal.

Originally Posted by Hugh (Post 36113305)

But they haven’t broken a contract - they’ve used part of the contract to end the relationship.

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter (Post 36113557)

Exactly and this suits big business just fine.

Originally Posted by punkrock101 (Post 36113999)

They will shut it down as I can't see O2 wanting to hold onto the Virgin branding to be honest I think they will get rid of it as its a terrible brand compared to them

Originally Posted by Paul (Post 36114066)

So .. If Virgin Mobile ceases to be, will all VM customers be moved to O2 ?

Originally Posted by Pierre (Post 36114035)

The company currently has a dual brand (as per the attached). Both O2 and Virgin are powerful brands. It's unlikely that they'll choose one over the other.

I would expect a new identity to be formulated in the fullness of time.



It was not a joint venture, VMO2, is a joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefonica whihc both own 50% of VMO2. Virgin Mobile pre 2006 was a thin MVNO that used T-Mobile's RAN and back office. It was basically just a re-badged T-Mobile service.



Virgin Mobile towards the end of the EE contract and into the Vodafone Contract transitioned from a Thin MVNO to a Thick MVNO where they only utilised the Mobile operators RAN and everything else (back office, core network, etc) was VM.

VMO2 have already advised that they are ending the MVNO contract with Vodafone and therefore Virgin Mobile will cease to be.

Originally Posted by BenMcr (Post 36134065)

Virgin Mobile SIMs have moved to the O2 radio network for most customers and that migration should be finished soon.

For some upgrades when you speak to an agent you may now also be offered O2 options as well as the Virgin Mobile ones. If you accept an O2 deal you'd be moved over to being a 'full' O2 customer.

Otherwise you remain a Virgin Mobile customer, and nothing has been announced about that changing.

Originally Posted by vm_tech (Post 36134466)

Hello Ben,

Have you been getting reports of terrible performance since the migrations started?

When VM was on the EE network it was superb. Moved to the Vodafone network and it was not quite as good but pretty decent. Since moving to o2 it has been diabolical. 4G speeds of 0.25mbps are not uncommon. It basically renders the phone useless, struggle to even load plain text a lot of the time.

It’s been widely documented that o2 have capacity issues, I can’t believe between VM and o2 they thought shifting a further 3-4 million customers onto the network was a good idea!

Originally Posted by jb66 (Post 36134595)

i was getting 600kb on 5G with o2 today!

Originally Posted by Itshim (Post 36134513)

Silly question could just be were you are , had Vodafone and it was rubbish now have Tesco (o2) which is great :dunce:

Originally Posted by vm_tech (Post 36134666)

I travel around a fair bit for work, and admittedly there are some places it seems alright. But there seem to be a lot more worse areas than good. Speaking to a few others on Virgin Mobile, and they are seeing similar issues.

I live in a relatively big city, and I was in the centre a few days ago, and it was in useable. A message over iMessage took a good 15 mins to send even though I had signal and also 4G.

A few weeks ago I was sat in one spot, and it was constantly changing between 5G,4G and 3G.

Also seems to connect to 3G an awful lot, which was very rare whilst using the EE and Vodafone networks.

Certainly seems to me there are serious widespread issues with the o2 network. In typical VM fashion I can’t see them admitting to any issues though!