Virgin Media O2 weighs bringing back Virgin Mobile three years on

Not officially, at least not yet. The report says Virgin Media O2, often shortened to VMO2, is looking at a revived Virgin Mobile as a low-cost option to slow the flow of customers leaving and to rebuild support from investors.

When asked about it, a VMO2 spokesperson didn’t address the brands at all. The company said only that its capital structure is sound despite tough market conditions.

There’s an obvious problem with the plan. VMO2 already owns giffgaff, one of the best-known budget mobile brands in the UK. Adding a second cheap label could split customers between two of its own brands, or simply leave shoppers unsure which one to pick.

VMO2 wouldn’t be the first to rethink a retired name. BT recently brought back BT Mobile, partly reversing an earlier push to steer its mobile customers toward EE.

Virgin Mobile was an MVNO, short for mobile virtual network operator: a company that sells phone plans while renting space on someone else’s network. It had a long and fairly successful run in the UK.

After Virgin Media and O2 combined their UK businesses, the group first moved Virgin Mobile users off Vodafone’s network. About a year later, in 2023, it shifted all 3 million of them onto O2 and dropped the name. Many people had expected the brand to survive the merger, so the shutdown surprised a lot of customers.

VMO2 is under heavy financial pressure, and that is the real backdrop to the brand talk. The company carries a debt pile of about £22bn, and its third-quarter revenue fell 5.7 per cent to £2.4bn.

In the quarter to the end of September, it lost 23,300 broadband customers and 7,800 consumer mobile customers. In October the cost-cutting target was reported at roughly £600m. The official figure announced in November was bigger: £800m a year by 2029.

Here’s what that plan includes:

• Jobs: £300m of the savings comes from cutting the wage bill by 30% over two years. VMO2 didn’t give a number, but that could mean up to 25% of its 16,000 staff, mostly in roles that don’t deal with customers.
• More AI: the company plans to lean more on AI tools for customer service, network planning and fault handling.
• Fiber pause: it will stop upgrading more of its network to full fiber beyond deals already signed, with the rollout about 50% complete.
• Contractors and suppliers: fewer contractors and a review of supplier deals.

Chief executive Lutz Schüler said a fuller update on the new strategy will come in the coming months. That is expected alongside annual results in early 2027, which is the most likely moment for any brand decision to surface.

It’s possible. O2 Broadband was a home internet service, and the reported plan would bring it back as a budget choice for price-conscious households.

There were early clues. In June 2026, an O2 Broadband page briefly appeared on O2’s website listing surprisingly cheap full fiber plans, then vanished once people noticed. Full fiber means a fiber line runs all the way into your home, which usually gives faster, steadier speeds.

The November plan makes a cheaper broadband brand easier to imagine. Instead of more full fiber, VMO2 will use lower-cost upgrades to bring most of its remaining cable network up to 2Gbps by the end of next year. It is also exploring wholesale deals to sell service outside its own network, and is reported to be close to an agreement with BT’s Openreach that could grow its reach from 19m homes to as many as 25m.

Your current phone or broadband plan doesn’t change because of any of this. No launch date, prices or plans for a new Virgin Mobile or O2 Broadband have been announced, and the job cuts are aimed mostly at roles away from customers. Unions have warned, though, that losing experienced staff could hurt service quality.

One change is already happening, and it has a deadline. Virgin Media stopped offering new email accounts years ago, and it is now handing management of existing ones to Junara, an email company owned by Atmail. That covers addresses ending in virginmedia.com, virgin.net, ntlworld.com and blueyonder.co.uk.

Customers are being contacted in phases that began in September, and each person gets three options:

• Close the email account.
• Download your emails and files and move to another provider, including free ones.
• Sign up with Junara and keep your existing address.

You get at least 45 days from your first message to choose, plus a further 120-day window to recover an account if you miss the notice. After that 165-day period, accounts with no action are permanently deleted, so check your inbox for the letter and act before the clock runs out.