Telefonica, the owner of O2 UK has published its latest
figures, and they show that a major milestone has been crossed by O2. The
firm now has 527,126 broadband lines in the UK (figures include both O2 and Be
customers). While this looks small compared to the big three of TalkTalk, BT
Retail and Virgin Media, when you look back at previous figures you can see that
just 12 months ago they had 267,090 lines, and the total net additions of
70,244 was higher than the previous quarter, suggesting the services popularity
continues to grow.
O2’s broadband service has not been without its problems, the ‘O2 Access’
product which is only sold in areas where they have not unbundled an exchange
has seen various congestion problems which tend to go hand in hand with trying
to run an unlimited service over the BT Wholesale 20CN and 21CN networks. How
large a segment of the customer base are ‘O2 Access’ customers is unclear, but
we suspect it is a small proportion.
Be Broadband may be the small and sometimes quirky partner in the O2 brand,
but it was among the first providers to offer ADSL2+ in the UK some years ago,
and is now involved in providing wholesale services to other broadband
providers.
Maybe in another 12 to 18 months, unless Orange manages to turn around its
customer churn, O2 will over take them in the league tables and break the one
million customer market.
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still a long way to go in selling broadband to their mobile customers, they’re the biggest mobile company by users (21m ?) so 0.5m broadband users is very tame – especially when you look at the loss leading pricing and cashbacks being thrown around.
Well the BE/O2 LLU network is still really great, especially for the money they charge.
O2 seem to have now fixed a lot of the problems with the LLU here in Canterbury and I’m very happy with the service and price! I just wish as a mobile operator they had a better 3G network as I want to get an iPhone but might have to go to the Orange side just to get 3G coverage in more than one place.
It is a real shame that they not unbundled our exchange, if they did then I doubt if I would have gone with BT. I doubt if O2 will even touch our Exchange, just rubbish Talk Talk and orange comes to us.
I was with Be a few years back, before they were taken over by telefonica. I jumped ship to Sky for cheap broadband but have just come back to O2 for the same. Be/O2 still have the best network capacity per user and I cant now see why I ever left.
Slim
“dont see where mobile figures enter the equation” – what ? you have 21m customers and you only manage to sell another product to 0.5m – abysmal performance. Even Sky have sold a lot more broadband connections with a smaller customer base to sell too.
I have been using ADSL since the days of the frog modem. Unfortunately my exchange is not unbundled. I made the mistake of switching from Metronet to O2 Access three months ago. It is without doubt the wort internet access speed I have ever had. At times it is slower than good old fashioned dial up. Quite simply at peak times it is unusable. I firmly believe that no matter how good the LLU service is O2 should stop selling the O2 Access product until they sort out the congestion issues.
Not sure how much advertising O2 do to their own customers, but with Sky it is pretty relentless.
O2 haven’t said anything to me about broadband; compared to Sky they’re certainly not driving their customer base to shift. In fairness, there has been the recent TV ad campaign, but as far as direct marketing goes, I’ve not received any!
failing to advertise may be part of the failure to acquire customers. BT Retail gained more net customers in the quarter than O2 despite the apparent brilliance of the O2 product.
To say O2 broadband is not without its problems is a massive understatement.
It amazes me that such a large company can be so incompetent when managing its growth. Very much a case of grab the money while we can and hang the consequences for our existing customers.
The video illustrates what you can really expect to get from O2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDWFyXz7MX4
If they are re-cruiting so many new customers then you would have thought they would invest money in unbundleing these exchanges ? o2 tried to make me pay extra to use the unbundled exchange near me but i was having none of it and am now paying what i was paying at my old address !!!!!!!
I was persuaded to sign up with O2 access for another year (first three months free). Almost immediately the service went to pot (again). No more that 0.5 Mb/s 18.00 – 23.00 for last fortnight with lows around 250kb/s. I sync with the exchange at 7.6 Mb/s and until a year or so ago, service was nearly always 6Mb/s. Now I seem to be getting 3.8 Mb/s max even at 5am. I’d gladly pay a bit more for better service. Is Newnet the answer? Regards to all, Mike
Access has traffic management now lol.
@mikevybiral
Check out TitanADSL, on tuesday their lines will apparently be working again, request one of the new packages (can no longer order O-Bit via site due to issues).
Or check out ICUK.
Andrew said, “Not sure how much advertising O2 do to their own customers, but with Sky it is pretty relentless.”
Well the answer is none whatsoever.
I am with O2 on an unbundled exchange – 8Mb connection running at 6.7 without overheads. I am 4.5 km from the exchange which is a dodgy old derelict. No evidense of traffic shaping on my line.
Not bad.
I get first class intelligent service from Customer Services whose first language is English.
Yup, I am a happy bunny.
I’m on the O2 Access product, and as I live in a rural area I know i can’t expect superfast speeds, but I DO expect something a bit faster than 0.1MB!!! Check out the speedtest result below:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/125526147762322930631.html
On average, download speed is less than 1MB and if it doesn’t improve my the time my minimum contract is up next March, I’m jumping ship…