Sky buyout of O2 Broadband

System

As Intamax wrote in post #170, an arrangement to provide a service free is not, in English law, an enforceable contract. To make an enforceable contract, there must be an exchange of valid 'consideration'. Eg (a) the provision of defined broadband access; in exchange for (b) payment of (at least) a peppercorn per month.

Therefore, once you accept O2's free offer, you have no enforceable rights. O2 can stop providing the free service at any time. When O2 does stop providing the free service, Sky will, presumably, offer you a replacement. Sky can offer this replacement on any terms they choose, including, for example, that to receive Sky broadband you must also pay for Sky "line rental" (ie their arbitrary minimum monthly charge independent of what services you do, or don't, use), and must use Sky as your provider of telephone calls.

You will, of course, have the right to refuse Sky's offer. But, at this point, switching to a different broadband provider could be messy. Since you did not have an enforceable contract with O2, it is not clear that O2 can be forced to provide you with a Migration Authorisation Code. Possibly, once O2 has switched off its free service to you, you can ask a different provider to provide you with a new service, on the basis that you currently have no broadband service.

Let's hope that the fearless defenders of the consumer at Ofcom will bear all this in mind when giving, or not, their consent to Telefonica's sale of its broadband business to Sky.

(I did say 'hope'.)

Quentin

The contract is for the full monthly charge.

Then under a separate arrangement o2 are refunding the charge each of the first 12 months.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

from bethere blog (BE/O2 broadband)

March 1, 2013
A new future for BE with Sky

Ok, so you’ve probably heard that we’re being sold to Sky, and you’re rightly thinking ‘what’s that all about?’ Well, first things first. We think it’s great news. Period. The demand for high quality internet is unstoppable – you know that, we know that. And Sky, well, they’ve really shaken up the UK broadband and landline market with their fully unbundled broadband network, great value packages, and a service that’s totally unlimited and unshaped – the same qualities we’re so passionate about. Even more than that, they’ve recently launched fibre (FTTC), something you know we’ve been desperate to launch ourselves for some time.
As for O2, they rightly want to focus on giving their customers the best possible mobile experience, including the launch of next generation 4G services in 2013. By selling us to Sky, they can focus on what they do best and we can get on with bringing you high-quality broadband you expect (and demand…) based on Sky’s network (much bigger than our own, by the way, and still growing).
So, if you’re a BE Member, what does this mean for you? Well, in the next few months, nothing. You’ll continue to get BE Broadband exactly as you do now and you don’t need to do a thing. Although we’ll be migrating your service across to Sky’s network, it’s unlikely to be much before the end of this year. In any event, we’ll give you plenty of notice before hand.
But it doesn’t stop there. Working with Sky in the coming months, we’ll be looking to review all parts of our service, including our systems, the way we sell our products, and the products themselves. Exciting times.
The BE Team

so by my reckoning Sky wont be using the O2/BE network infrastructure all O2/BE customers will be migrated to SKY what will this mean, well unless sky upgrade and expand its very busy and problematic network structure by the end of this year, we could expect those on static will not be offered a static IP via sky, those on annex M will be shunted over to sky's annex A or B network, taking over this many customers and migrating them over to a already busy network will further increase the PING, and youll be left with sky's appaling customer services so if you get technical on the phone youll simply be told the process on the router checks over again and when that fails you be told youll have a ring back from their inexpreinced technical staff wich never meterialises so youll end up paying more in phone calls to Sky to chase up your fault ticket.

this isnt for me, i vowed to sky that i will never ever give them another penny from me, and will never ever have any of their services again, when they wanted to charge me £180.00 for a new sky box (not plus) when my box was only 2 months installed and had only 2 weeks of sky viewing due to the faulty box they did not want to repair or replace and passed me pillar to post in trying to get the problem remedied.

StevieJ

AlanS wrote: »

If you decide to stay with Sky and see how it all pans out, then be aware that your existing O2 email address will only have a 20Mb limit and will fill up very quicky.
.

I notice that my O2 mobile email address has 200 MB, is it possible to get them to change this to the Broadband email address?

Taurusmoo

As soon as I received the letter from o2 confirming the take over I went straight for my MAC code.

I refuse to fund someone (Murdoch) whom I consider an enemy of the state. Anyone bought off by their free year should look hard at themselves in the mirror. It actually felt really good telling o2 I couldn't be bought.

System

Quentin wrote: »

The contract is for the full monthly charge.
Then under a separate arrangement O2 are refunding the charge each of the first 12 months.

Interesting. Have you yet seen this in writing on a bill or whatever?

It would mean that O2 is regarding existing contracts as continuing, either
(a) if there is one, for their existing fixed term; or
(b) tacitly renewed month by month (what people loosely term 'out of contract').

Or (c) are they replacing (b) by a new 12-month contract?

It would follow that O2 remains obliged to give you a MAC on request, but can recover reasonable losses if (a) or (c) applies.

Meanwhile, separately, as an act of disinterested charity, O2 is making a gentleman's promise to pay you a monthly sum equal to the existing monthly cost of your contract, for 12 months, or until you cease being an O2 customer, whichever is the earlier. I'm assuming that O2 is not promising to go on paying you after you have accepted, at some future date, being switched to Sky.

If that is more or less O2's stance, then presumably there is also a vague expectation that Sky, if you eventually agree to transfer to Sky, will continue these payments to complete the total of 12 payments. Or, possibly, will offer a successor sweetener of x months 'free'?

Quentin

Yes that's how it looks on the latest bill.

macman

Taurusmoo wrote: »

As soon as I received the letter from o2 confirming the take over I went straight for my MAC code.

I refuse to fund someone (Murdoch) whom I consider an enemy of the state. Anyone bought off by their free year should look hard at themselves in the mirror. It actually felt really good telling o2 I couldn't be bought.

Please explain how you can be 'funding' Murdoch if he has to give you 12m broadband service for free?

thor

I've just been talking to a friend who is getting peed off with O2 broadband's unreliability and is considering going back to virginmedia(I told him switching to O2 was a bad idea in the first place). The problem is that he is just into the 2nd of a 12(or 18) month contract. It was only days after signing up with them that the sky announcement was released. Will this give him a possible opportunity to dump O2 BB without any penalties?

jem16

O2 don't do 18 month contracts for BB. Free 12 months means free for the entire 12 months contract.