The broadband giant announced its intentions to enter the mobile space at the start of last year
Sky has announced today (October 20) that customers will be able to pre-register to Sky Mobile, its new O2-powered MVNO service, from the end of month.
The broadband giant’s UK and Ireland CEO Stephen van Rooyen unveiled the news at its annual investor day meeting in its Osterley headquarters. Sky’s new mobile service will be offered alongside existing pay-TV, broadband and fixed line services.
It is a move which will see it become the UK’s latest quad-play provider. Once the service is in full operation, Sky will go head-to-head with the likes of Virgin, TalkTalk and BT in the UK quad-play space. Other MVNOs operating on O2’s network include Tesco Mobile and giffgaff.
Today’s announcement comes after Sky, who currently has more than 11 million UK subscribers, announced in January last year it had struck a deal with Telefonica to use O2’s network. An official launch date and pricing is yet to be unveiled for Sky Mobile.
According to reports, van Rooyen said: ““There are literally millions of customers for us to go after. We know that our customers are not only interested in Sky Mobile, but once they have been shown the proposition, they would consider switching to Sky.”
It follows the European Commission’s decision to block O2’s proposed £10.25 billion takeover of Three in May. Reasons for the block, according to the EC, were driven by fears the takeover would negatively affect competition in the UK.
Vodafone Group merger
Sky had most notably signed an agreement in June for a £1.7 billion merger which both claimed would create New Zealand’s ‘leading media group’.
At the time of the announcement, Vodafone New Zealand had over 2.35 million mobile and half a million fixed-line connections. Sky had 830,000 TV subscribers.
