Virgin Media O2 has revealed its progress on 5G coverage, ARPU, revenue growth and Capex for the first quarter of 2023.
Virgin Media O2’s fixed customer base grew by 20,900, taking the total base to 5.8 million, supported by a reduced level of customer churn. Fixed ARPU fell to £46.35 from £48.32.

Virgin Media O2 has added 28,800 broadband customers. Virgin Media O2 said the download speed across broadband base increased by 36 percent to 315 Mbps – approximately 5 times higher than the national average.

Virgin Media O2 has added 20,900 contract mobile connections to reach 16.1 million during the first quarter. This was driven by increased seasonal activity notably at the lower end of the consumer market.

O2 monthly contract churn increased to 1 percent, driven by increased large enterprise disconnections, as consumer O2 monthly contract churn remained at the stable and low level of 0.8 percent despite announcing price rises in the quarter.

Virgin Media O2’s total mobile base grew to 44.9 million, with 296,900 additions in the quarter primarily supported by growth in IoT. Virgin Media O2 has 10.2 million IoT connections in Q1 2023 vs 8.584 million in Q1 2022. Virgin Media O2’s pre-paid connections dropped to 7.814 million from 8.062 million.

Revenue increased 3.9 percent to £2,605.8 million. Mobile revenues increased 3.4 percent to £1,429.2 million, including an 8.3 percent increase in handset revenues to £386.9 million. Fixed revenues decreased 4.8 percent to £958.3 million. Consumer Fixed revenues fell 3.8 percent to £822.4 million, while B2B Fixed revenues dropped 10.6 percent to £135.9 million.