Q1 results for Virgin Media O2 show broadband losses decreasing

Virgin Media O2 says it is in a period of laying the foundations for the future and is carefully targeting its network investments, as part of its results for the quarter ending 31st March 2026.

While price rises across many providers are a common complaint, and Virgin Media O2 has some of the biggest jumps from in contract pricing to out of contract pricing compared to the same quarter a year ago the ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit) has gone down 1.6% from £47.26 to £46.50 a month with regards to Consumer fixed line relationships.

The new foundation that is replacing the old DOCSIS network is the Project Mustang and nexfibre XGS-PON rollouts. Project Mustang is meant to see all the old coax network overbuilt with XGS-PON full fibre for 2028, and nexfibre is a joint venture building XGS-PON in areas adjacent to the current network or totally new places.

The full fibre network has reached a footprint of 8.7 million premises though nexfibre activity is described as decreasing i.e. “Network construction and other revenue decreased 89.2%, reflecting reduced nexfibre build activity compared with the prior-year“.

Our mapping is tracking the nexfibre and Project Mustang rollouts and the footprint once you include the older RFOG network is running at 8.1 million premises with 2.5 million premises served by nexfibre. We had planned on a short article to highlight our tracking had broken the 8 million mark, but have been beaten to press by 24 hours with the Virgin Media O2 results. More importantly in Project Mustang areas we are seeing a small but visible number of customers utilising a 2 Gbps service based on speed test results.

Previous quarters have raised concerns around the number of losses of broadband customers at Virgin Media, and while this quarter showed 5,300 net losses for broadband customers this is a lot better than the same quarter a year ago when they lost 42,800 broadband customers.

Just like BT Consumer providers we would expect the losses to be in the areas where the network has not seen any recent upgrades, so losses of DOCSIS 3.1 customers may being balanced by gains in nexfibre areas, especially if nexfibre is the first full fibre option.

With the altnet full fibre rollouts slowing down, the marketing behemoth that is Virgin Media O2 should be able to turn the customer losses around we’d expect in the next couple of quarters, especially as they say they have worked to decrease consumer complaints by 42% year on year.

The broadband price wars are having an impact on the revenue at generated by consumers at Virgin Media O2, as even with the price rises revenue has dropped from £803.6 million a year to £772 million a 3.9% decrease. Another factor for decreasing revenue will be people ditching nice to have but not essential extras on their broadband and TV subscription services as the cost of living continues to increase and wages are not always keeping up.