A Reading-registered UK communications company formed in 2021 that brings together the O2 mobile network and Virgin Media broadband for millions of UK customers.
Virgin Media O2, often shortened to VMO2, is one of the biggest communications companies in the UK. It combines two household names: O2, which runs a mobile network that carries calls, texts and data for phones, and Virgin Media, which brings broadband, TV and home phone into houses and businesses. Its own website also lists Virgin Mobile and Virgin Media Business among its brands. The company says it has about 45.8 million subscribers and about 16,000 employees. If you have ever used a phone on O2 or a Virgin Media broadband box at home, you have already used what this company builds and runs.
The company was formed on 1 June 2021, when the O2 business (then known as Telefonica UK) and Virgin Media joined together. On its About page it describes the aim as giving the UK "more choice and better value", and uses the tagline "supercharge the UK". It also talks about a plan it calls Better Connections, which is its approach to environmental and social goals. We could not find a longer list of company values on the pages we read, so we have not made one up.
Virgin Media O2's registered office is at 500 Brook Drive, Green Park, Reading. In 2023 the company announced a new central London headquarters at 3 Sheldon Square in Paddington Central, and said that staff would work between there and the Reading office, which opened in 2019. Its older Slough and Hammersmith offices were due to close by the end of 2023. Beyond offices, the business has O2 shops and engineers and customer teams spread across the country, because its network has to reach homes and phone masts everywhere. The company says its mobile network reaches 99 percent of the UK population with 4G and that its fixed network passes around 16 million premises (2022 figures).
On culture, the company says its new London office was designed to support flexible working and to be a lively place where teams can meet in person. The finance chief, Patricia Cobian, described the aim as "bringing the buzz back to the office". The same announcement said that moving away from Slough was not meant to cut jobs and that most employees could keep their roles. Those are the company's own statements, so it is worth asking current staff what working there is really like. A business of this size needs many kinds of people: network engineers, data and software specialists, retail and customer service teams, marketers, finance and legal staff, and project managers.
How people join is not something we have researched here, so we have no sourced route to describe. The company is large and has a mix of technical and customer-facing jobs, so a good first step is to browse the careers section of its website, look at the range of job families and see which ones match your interests. If you like the idea of keeping the country connected, subjects such as maths, physics, computing and engineering are a good fit for the network side, while business, languages and communication skills matter for roles that deal with customers and partners.
Website: www.virginmediao2.co.uk
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