Crown (telecommunications)

Crown Cellular plc (formerly The O2 Company) is a British public holding company formed in August 27, 2020, to hold telecommunications assets sold by Styhon Battersea to prevent antitrust violations. Almost all shares are owned by Kasperi Salovaara, who is also the co-founder and a shareholder of Styhon Battersea.

As of December 2020, its only brand is O2, formerly owned by Telefonica UK.

Spin-off of O2
In 2020, Styhon Battersea successfully acquired,  and , which would result in them gaining the UK telecom market share of 65% (counting Tesco Mobile's 6% share). During the acquisition process, Styhon Battersea discussed a spin-off of certain assets with the British, German and Irish governments to prevent a duopoly in the countries.

Vodafone Italy, Vodafone Spain and 3 Austria (merged with Czech Telecom Austria GmbH) were sold to Crown Cellular and rebranded under O2 by December 2020; Tele2 Germany, sold with O2 Germany, merged with Czech Telecom Germany GmbH into O2 by that time as well.

O2 was announced to launch in Serbia in January 2021, after Vip mobile (integrated with Telenor Serbia) was set to partially split in a way that would allow 10% of the Serbian telecom market share to go to a new telecom (out of the 55% market share owned by Vip mobile at the moment). O2 will also launch in Ukraine, as of result of Kyivstar's split into Vodafone Ukraine and O2.

Vodafone Ireland and Telenor Bulgaria were transferred from Styhon Battersea to Oliver Watson's OWL Ventures, who then struck a deal with Crown to relaunch them under the O2 brand by mid-February 2021.

Virgin Media-O2 merger
On 7 May 2020, it was announced that Telefónica had agreed to merge Telefónica UK with Liberty Global subsidiary Virgin Media, subject to approval, into a 50/50 joint venture. If the deal is approved, the merger will be completed by the middle of 2021.

The deal was put on hold temporarily during Styhon Battersea's sale of O2 (which was inherited from its acquisition of Telefónica), but Salovaara, Crown's CEO, affirmed that the merger talks were still happening with Liberty Global.