O2 Broadband Tastes the Oxygen of Publicity

By Julia Kukiewicz Staff Writer Wednesday, 7 May 2008

O2 Broadband Launches £6m Publicity Campaign O2 Broadband Packages: O2 Broadband Standard - Up to 8Mb/s - £7 a month for O2 mobile customers - £12.50 a month for non-O2 customers O2 Broadband Premium - Up to 16Mb/s - £10 a month for O2 mobile customers - £15 a month for non-O2 customers O2 Broadband Ultimate - Up to 20Mb/s - £15 a month for O2 mobile customers - £20 a month for non-O2 customers O2 Broadband Access (Outside O2 area) - Up to 8Mb/s - £17.50 a month for O2 mobile customers - £22.50 a month for non-O2 customers Related Broadbands News See our other recent related news stories: Is O2 Broadband any good? With its massive publicity campaign you may be tempted to ask whether O2 broadband is any good. Neil Hawkins finds out.

THEY’VE been quietly working away for some months but now high-speed broadband provider O2 Broadband has finally succumbed to the oxygen of publicity and launched a multi-million-pound advertising campaign.

The £6m advertising deal marks an important turning point in the growth of O2’s broadband services: under a new deal with BT their services will soon be available nationwide.

That’s not a bad growth rate for a company that only launched its broadband deals for O2 mobile users in September and only extended them to the general public in February.

Currently, 100,000 residential customers use O2 Broadband.

The company plans to make this a million by 2010 and hopes to extend its service to small and medium sized business owners, too.

A new big broadband provider?

O2 followed other communications companies Virgin Media and Sky into the competitive UK broadband market when it bought much-loved independent provider Be broadband two years ago.

Since then, the company seems to have incorporated the ethos of the smaller provider into its own broadband services, quickly winning a formidable reputation for excellent customer services and reliability.

However, O2 Broadband has entered the market at an ultra-competitive time.

Sky added 229,000 customers in the last quarter, two-thirds of whom switched from rival providers, according to the company’s estimates.

Amongst schemes to attract customers was a popular price slash for non O2 mobile customers.

Prices look set to rise for some customers under the BT deal, though.

After the summer, the 30% of the population who will still not be able to receive O2 broadband – albeit at a maximum of 8Mbps because BT’s network currently does not support anything higher - through the company’s own network will have to pay an extra £10 for the use of the BT line.

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