O2 sees a reduction in mobile contracts, declines to 16 million

O2 lost 74,500 active mobile contracts between January and March, ending with a total of 16 million, as disclosed in its latest financial results for Q1 2024.

The news coincides with Ofcom's latest complaints data, revealing O2 as the most complained about network for the second time in a row.

Unsurprisingly, this is not the reason O2 are attributing to the reduction in mobile contracts. Rather, O2 says the decline was primarily caused by a reduction in handset sales and cancellations following the retiring of legacy billing systems. Although O2 did not disclose what they exactly mean by legacy billing systems, we assume this is related to the Virgin Media O2 merger, with Virgin Mobile customers gradually being moved to O2 contracts.

Total mobile connections, which also includes MNVOs that use O2, such as giffgaff, Tesco Mobile and Sky Mobile, was up by 222,100 to 45.1 million. It should be noted that giffgaff is wholly owned by O2, and Tesco Mobile is a 50/50 venture between Tesco Mobile and O2, so growth in this sector benefits O2 more than usual, compared to other major networks which essentially just rent out their infrastructure to smaller networks without necessarily owning a stake in the company.

O2 also revealed they are continuing to heavily invest in 5G, and switched on 5G Standalone in 14 cities throughout the UK. They also disclosed that over 50% of the UK has access to 5G in outdoor locations.