Virgin Media O2 buys east England Upp broadband network to resell to its JV

[1andrew1]

All go on the deals front today!

The UK telecoms group [VM O2]will initially buy the business before selling it on to a joint venture called Nexfibre between its owner Liberty Global, Spain’s Telefónica and InfraVia Capital Partners within the next year.

The British government ordered the sale of Upp late last year after deciding LetterOne’s ownership of the company was a “risk to national security”.

Upp has about 4,000 retail and business customers and offers broadband services to about 175,000 premises in the east of England.

Virgin Media O2 and Nexfibre said that more than £350mn would be invested to build out the network to more than 500,000 premises by 2026.

Lutz Schüler, chief executive of Virgin Media O2, said that it and Nexfibre had a “clear strategy in place to be the biggest fibre challenger in the country, offering greater choice and competition to the BT status quo”.

https://www.ft.com/content/e9c46724-...5-112b9775c28f

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s stc Group has acquired a 9.9% stake in the co-owner of VM 02, Telefonica, for €2.1 billion, becoming Telefonica's largest shareholder.
https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2023...of-telefonica/

[Pierre]

Not the first shoots of Alt-Net consolidation that we may have hoped for. Upp had to be sold to someone as it was owned or at least financed by Russian money. So they would have been bought by someone regardless.

Makes sense for VM/Nex to buy it, as there is very little overlap with existing network, but it has been built using different equipment and different standards to what VM use, so it will all have to be audited and brought in line with VM, and connected to the VM backhaul, before being passed onto Nex.