A report claims Sky is interested in collaborating with O2

O2 has been getting a lot of attention from other businesses recently, first BT, then Hutchinson Whampoa, and now a reportsclaims that Sky is interested in working with O2.

The report was published in the Financial Times, and claims that the telecoms company has been in talks with O2 since late 2014. The difference is, though, that Sky apparently has little interest in an outright takeover, preferring to stick to a simple merger or collaborative partnership.

The move will apparently help Sky compete with its competitors (namely Virgin, BT and Talk Talk) by offering quad play bundles of TV, landlines, broadband, and mobile phone contracts.

This time last year Sky tried a similar partnership with Vodafone, offering 20,000 of its phone and broadband customers the opportunity to take part in a trial of a mobile virtual network operator service, i.e. a mobile service operated by Sky, but piggybacking on Vodafone’s signal. Clearly that didn’t work out as well as Sky had hoped.

It’s possible that a similar situation could take place here, or it could be that O2’s parent company, Telefonica, is just looking to sell off the company and be done with it. We’ll just have to wait for official announcements, but it’s clear that things are going to change for O2.