An O2 web page that appeared to be hidden from public view briefly showed three new full fibre broadband packages before disappearing, raising fresh questions about whether Virgin Media O2 is testing an O2 Broadband return.
Chris, one of ISPreview’s readers, spotted the page on /shop/o2-broadband last week. It listed Classic 500 Full Fibre at £10 a month, Plus 1000 Full Fibre at £15 a month and Ultimate 2000 Full Fibre at £20 a month, each with a 12-month minimum contract term. The page also included a “Choose this package” option, although other parts did not work.
The timing matters because the page vanished as soon as it was queried, and the link then redirected to the VMO2 Volt package information page. For people watching the company’s fixed-line plans, that made the page look less like a stray design error and more like a possible test of a product that had not yet been announced.
Virgin Media O2 pushed back on that reading. The company said the page did not reflect a commercial proposition and described it as part of ongoing development work, while adding that it would keep customers updated if there was anything to share. That denial sits awkwardly beside the fact that the page clearly showed three priced packages, which is why the brief appearance has drawn attention in the first place.
O2 has been here before. It ran its own fixed broadband service after buying BE Unlimited in 2006, built that business to a peak of 671,000 customers in 2010 and then sold its fixed broadband and phone arm to Sky in March 2013 for more than £180m, when it had about 560,000 customers. After Liberty Global and Telefonica agreed their 50-50 joint venture in May 2020, Virgin Media and O2 began offering Volt packages and O2 stopped reselling its own broadband products.
That history is why the hidden page matters. If the O2 Broadband branding and the low headline prices were ever turned into a real launch, it would mark a notable shift in strategy for a business that has stayed away from selling its own fixed broadband since the merger. The pricing was described as not far from the kind of trial offer giffgaff used before launching its own full fibre packages on the VMO2-built nexfibre network last year, which only adds to the sense that someone was testing how a new offer might look. For now, though, the answer is plain: the page was real enough to be seen, priced and then removed, but not real enough for Virgin Media O2 to call it a product plan.
Related company updates on Virgin Media O2’s wider network and device strategy have included its 2030 green and reuse targets and a separate circularity push built around refurbished devices, but this broadband page remains unresolved. The open question is not whether the page existed — it did — but whether it was a glimpse of a launch to come or just a test that got away.
