O2 (Telefonica Europe Plc)

Telefónica Europe Plc (O2)

Is an European telecommunications company providing both fixed and mobile communication products, usually under the styled brand O2 (typeset as O2). The company has its origins in a collection of worldwide mobile businesses, known in the latter half of the 1990s as BT Wireless within British Telecom and an operator-independent global mobile data business then known as Genie Internet, which was also a subsidiary of BT Group.

This demerger of BT's mobile communications businesses was part of a plan to strengthen the capital position of its shareholders following declining telecommunications industry valuations in the late 1990s. The companies involved in the demerger were BT Cellnet, which became O2 UK; Esat Digifone, which became O2 Ireland; Viag Interkom, which became O2 Germany; Telfort, which became O2 Netherlands; Manx Telecom (Isle of Man); O2 Airwave (UK); and Genie Internet, which split into O2 Online and O2 Asia.

The demerger took place on 17 November 2001, the resultant parent company being named mmo2 plc. A later capital reorganisation in March 2005 also saw the name of the company change to O2 plc.

After a five year period of independence (during which it disposed of its subsidiary in Netherlands to a private equity company, which reverted it back to the Telfort brand) the O2 group was acquired by Telefónica of Spain on 23 January 2006 in what was described at that time as the biggest all-cash takeover in the history of the telecommunications industry.

Following the £17.7 billion cash purchase by Telefónica the company was renamed Telefónica O2 Europe plc. At the same time (March 2006), Telefónica merged its Český Telecom and Eurotel businesses into Telefónica O2 Czech Republic which became a subsidiary of Telefónica O2 Europe plc. Additionally, in 2006 O2 UK acquired a UK-based DSL broadband startup called Be Unlimited and the O2 group won a tender to become the 3rd mobile phone operator in Slovakia, forming a company trading as Telefónica O2 Slovakia. In 2007, the group sold Airwave to a subsidiary of Australia's Macquarie Group.

In June 2008, the company was renamed Telefónica Europe plc. The company has its group headquarters in Slough, UK, with its Irish Headquarters in Dublin, German headquarters in Munich, Czech headquarters in Prague, Slovak headquarters in Bratislava and Manx headquarters in Douglas, Isle of Man. It has several hundred national retail outlets across these countries offering mobile phone, fixed telephony and broadband DSL products. By 31 March 2009 the company had 46.7 million customers in the UK, Germany, Ireland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

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