Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:07):
We're in Barcelona for MWC 25. I'm here with Jeanie York. She is the Chief Technology Officer at Virgin Media, O2. Jeanie. Great to have you with telecomtv. Thanks so much for taking time out of your schedule today.

Jeanie York, VMO2 (00:20):
Very good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:22):
Okay. Can you just talk us through your fixed broadband network strategy Right now, VMO2 is traditionally a cable broadband operator, but you are shifting to fiber, right?

Jeanie York, VMO2 (00:33):
Absolutely. Yeah. We started about two years ago for a meaningful transformation to a full fiber optic network where we will be expanding to over 21 million homes before the end of the decade. That's a complete modernization of all of the underlying infrastructure. From the access all the way up to the core, providing us a great opportunity to become a real true number two competitor in the UK market, which is the first time we're going to be seeing that kind of scale and open competition in the UK market up against bt. So that's moving along quite nicely. Last year we had probably one of our best build years with about 2 million homes passed. We do that with a partnership of our next fiber partnership, which is our Greenfield build as well as the HFC overbuild that we're doing ourselves. So yeah, making fantastic progress, obviously wanting to get that network built so that we can get into the wholesale market and bring more of those customers on board from an ISP perspective.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:40):
Okay, great. And how about 5G? Because getting a return on investment from 5G appears to still be a bit of a challenge for the telco sector. And where are you with 5G standalone? What are your plans for 5G advanced and can 5G deliver more than just faster mobile broadband? A lot of 5G questions there.

Jeanie York, VMO2 (02:02):
No, no, absolutely. We've been on 5G 5G build process last several years. Obviously. We're currently, in terms of 5G coverage, we're hitting about 75% of the POP coverage in the UK right now. We plan to be a hundred percent by 2030 5G standalone. We were one of the first providers in the country to go standalone, which was fantastic. So we did that last year and

(02:28):
we've just recently launched our standalone product for our B2B customer segment, which is really kind of the real use case that we're seeing in mobile is in privatization for big customers, whether that's manufacturing customers, agricultural customers, that's where we've seen monetization actually come first. Of course, in the future, I think it's not going to be too farfetched to think that we can't do a consumer monetization as well, but that's still a little bit more nascent in thought. But the idea is of being able to go to your local rugby game and be able to potentially buy a slice is something that the technology allows us to do, and that's something that we're looking into.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (03:17):
And the 5G gravy train for the vendors that I might call, it seems to never end. I mean, 5G Advanced is next, and of course now people are talking about six G as well, because there the meetings start next week in South Korea to start to develop that. I mean, is there that much more to come? Do you think that there will eventually be a return on investment story for 5G for network operators?

Jeanie York, VMO2 (03:43):
Look, I think it's going to evolve, right? 5G, just like 4G and 3G, there's significant investments. We are investing about 2 million pounds a day in our mobile network alone. So to recoup all of that, maybe not likely, but I think that there is value that can be had and it's just taken us a lot longer to actually build that network as every provider out there has experienced. It takes a long time. It's capital intensive, we will get return, but I think it's a lot longer period than we all thought. Right,

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:21):
Right. Okay. That's the problem. Yeah, I mean there are lots of big promises, early doors, everybody was excited. That's how and look.

Jeanie York, VMO2 (04:27):
Yeah, 6G, it's always important to have evolution of technology, so our industry has to keep looking at ways to get more efficient, give better customer experience. Six G six, it's relatively nascent. A lot of policy work happening right now. A lot of standardization work happening right now. It's important to look to that technology, but as for deploying it in the next year or two, there's no good use case out there for that today. Right. We want to take advantage of our 5G network now.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:01):
Okay. Now sticking with the radio access network, Telephonica, obviously one of your parent companies has long been a supporter and a promoter of Open ran. There's been some open ran trials at BM O2. What is the status of those trials? What's the approach there? Does network disaggregation play a big role across the whole of VM O two's network estate?

Jeanie York, VMO2 (05:27):
Yeah, so look, we did just go live with one of our first locations last week actually, and so Brownfield O ran is certainly a lot more of a challenge than Greenfield. I think anybody that's in the space of testing that technology will tell you that disaggregation is absolutely the path forward. There's no question about that. Whether that's virtual RAN ran the continued opening up of software and decoupling hardware, we'll continue to push that, right? From a technology perspective and from a VMO2 perspective, we've learned a lot with O Ran and I think it's still going to continue to be an important part of our strategy. I think at scale, when you're dealing with other incumbents in the network, it gets a little bit more complex to do that at scale. So I'd say watch this space. We continue to invest in it. It's important for our strategy. But full scale o ran tomorrow, probably not the case.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:33):
Yeah, absolutely. Now at this show, AI is everywhere. It is the big messaging, it's a big technology, but underlying everything that's still a focus on green networks, getting greater energy efficiency, reducing power consumption where possible. Is the industry doing enough to help companies like yourself and CTOs like yourself to reduce or make your networks more energy efficient? Because that's absolutely critical, isn't it?

Jeanie York, VMO2 (07:05):
No. Look, sustainability for Virgin Media two hugely important. We as an industry play a massive role in carbon reduction. So for us, we take it very seriously. We work very hard with all of our key providers, whether that's a core network or a RAN network provider. I think we've made good progress. We've made good progress and optimizing the energy that these radio units are using, that the consumption that we're having in our database and infrastructure. So we've made progress. There's always more to do in that space. There's always more to do in that space. So we don't stop, we don't let them off the hook for that. Plus, we're also looking at ways where we simplify our architecture. We have less sites, we use less energy if we have less sites. So data center consolidation, site consolidation, those are very big pieces as well as modernizing our estate so that we get the more efficient equipment into the network. So those all come together with the capability of getting carbon emission down, but much more to do. Much more to do.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:17):
Do you think that the industry is doing enough as being innovative enough?

Jeanie York, VMO2 (08:22):
I do think if you look at asics and how much energy efficiency has drawn off the last 10 years saying look at radio technology in the last 10 years, you go look at a radio tower from a decade ago to today, now they're almost getting five, seven bands in a radio. It's, it's really impressive that compression, but we almost need another doubling of vow, and that takes another generation or two of technology evolution and more software development to tune that because software's as important as the hardware piece of it. So I definitely think we're on the right path. We all need to push harder.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:03):
Okay. Well enjoy the rest of the show. I hope you find some more interesting technologies to look at and companies to meet that. Jeanie, thanks so much for joining us, on telecomtv.