Virgin Media O2 incentivises subscribers to double-down on its services

Newly combined VMO2 has unveiled its first major product refresh since the merger completed, offering twice as much data goodness if customers double-down.

There’s not much point in going to all the trouble of creating a converged telco unless you try to get people buying all your services. That’s apparently easier said than done, with the BT and EE brands still quite distinct from each other after that merger, but VMO2 is giving it a go nonetheless.

The result is ‘Volt’, which is being marketed as a ‘supercharged’ service. The tariffs are tricky to understand but at their simplest you have a £40, 18-month contract that gives you 200 Mbps broadband and a 10GB SIM-only contract. Both of those are apparently double what you get if you buy either the broadband or mobile separately. Those who already subscribe to both get whatever service they have upgraded to the next tier up.

At the top end there’s also a £99, 18-month contract that gives you 1 Gbps broadband, a SIM-only mobile contract with ‘unlimited’ data, and a bunch of premium telly. A significant failing of the press release is how the pricing is conveyed, with the £40 followed by ‘(£63 ongoing) and the £99 followed by ‘(£161 ongoing)’. Our assumption is that the lower figures are introductory ones that revert to the higher ones after a certain period of time but, if so, we could find no such explanation.

“With Volt, we’re combining the speed and reliability of Virgin Media’s broadband and O2’s mobile networks alongside a variety of incredible perks to give our customers more,” said Jeff Dodds, Chief Operating Officer at VMO2. “The launch of converged services in less than 150 days as a business is a huge milestone moment and demonstrates the momentum we have behind our commitment to supercharge connectivity across the UK. This is just the start.”

It feels like a relatively simple offering and seamless signing up process that should resonate with customers,” said TMT Analyst Paolo Pescatore. “Ultimately, consumers want reliable and robust connections at affordable pricing. In turn this will help increase loyalty and reduce churn.” Indeed, but they presumably also want simple and transparent tariffs.

UPDATE, 16:00 18/10.21: We received the following clarification from VMO2 “The introductory prices are for 18 months (the duration of the minimum term contract) and then revert to the ongoing price at which point customers can get in touch with us to agree a new deal and recontract should they wish to.”