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, through his company Vuori.
As of December 2020, its primary brand is O2 (though they also own giffgaff), formerly owned by Telefonica UK. Its other brand Vodafone is set to be discontinued or sold in the near future.
History
Spin-off of O2
In 2020, Styhon Battersea successfully acquired Vodafone, CK Hutchison Holdings and Telefónica, 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 (merged with Iliad Italia), 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 A1 Serbia (formed out of a merger between Vip mobile and Telenor Serbia) was set to partially split in a way that would allow at least 15% of the Serbian telecom market share to go to a new telecom (out of the 55% market share owned by A1 Serbia at the moment). O2 will also launch in Ukraine, as of result of O2's acquisitions of Kyivstar and TriMob.
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.
In March 2021, Hoot, Crown and Viettel decided to merge their Asian operations into O2 Asia Pacific. The deal does not include Three in Hong Kong and Macau, SoftBank in Japan, or Viettel in Vietnam. To make up for the merger, Hoot sold off Telstra's 30% stake in Sensis, while transferring their 35% stake in Foxtel to O2 Australia.
Styhon Battersea Telecom/Crown merger
Around mid-2021, during OWL Ventures's IPO, Styhon Battersea and Crown started a "silent merger" into their majority owner Vuori, with Crown becoming the surviving division solely dedicated to the "telecoms" industry. As of result, Crown gained its own division for operations in Asia, Oceania, the Middle East and Africa, which it would rebrand as O2 by the end of 2021, with the exception of a few brands.
Along with the merger, Vuori acquired Technicolor SA, from whom Crown subsequently acquired the telecommunications solutions and electronics departments, and merged it with Telindus, Telenor Common Operation (Hungary), Vodafone Global Enterprise, Telehouse Europe, BICS and Telefónica Business Solutions to form Crown Enterprise Solutions, which is also in charge of making O2 branded ADSL and OTT boxes.
A1 (in Belarus, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia; owned through A1 Telekom Austria Group) was immediately integrated into O2 during the merger, with Proximus Group (with Proximus, Scarlet and Tango), Liberty Global, the newly-reacquired Tele2 Croatia, Telenor Montenegro, Hey, Telenor Hungary, O2 Slovakia, Tele2 (in Russia, Latvia and Lithuania), Beeline (in Russia, Armenia and Georgia), Play, UPC Broadband (in Switzerland, Poland and Slovakia), Tele2, Hi3G Access AB (3 Sweden), Tre (Hi3G Denmark ApS) and Sunrise.
Vodafone (in Romania, Albania, Turkey and Portugal) followed suit. Swisscom FL was acquired and turned into O2 Liechtenstein, a JV with Swisscom. Vodafone Greece and Wind Hellas merged to form O2 Greece. Bouygues Telecom and Free (with Free Infrastructure & Free Mobile) merged to become O2 France, while Cytamobile-Vodafone became O2 Cyprus. San Marino Telecom, Telefonia Mobile Sammarinese and Telenet SrL merged to become O2 San Marino. The Estonian operations of Elisa and Tele2 were merged to form O2 Estonia. Nova and Vodafone Iceland merged to form O2 Iceland. Mtel Bosnia and Herzegovina became O2 BH. MTS Kosovo and IPKO merged to become O2 Kosovo. Ice (formerly owned by Access Industries) became O2 Norway. Bakcell, Nakhtel and AzerTelecom merged to form O2 Azerbaijan.
Lycamobile merged its operations into O2 in UK, Russia, France, Spain, Austria, North Macedonia, Ukraine, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Poland, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland and Germany. Also, 3 Group Europe, Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong Holdings and Hutchison Asia Telecom Group were merged entirely into Crown Cellular plc; Three in Hong Kong and Macau, and Wind Tre in Italy were spun off into a new unit in Hoot called Three Holdings B.V. in Amsterdam, while Three in UK and Ireland became part of Vodafone Three plc.
Airtel-Vodafone and Sure merged to form O2 Channel Islands, with operations also in the Isle of Man. Andorra Telecom was acquired by Crown and rebranded as O2 Andorra, now a joint venture between Crown and the government of Andorra.
On January 1, 2021, Crown sold its stake in O2 India to Qualis Telecom. Crown will still license the brand.
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.
Proposed acquisition of Vodafone New Zealand
After O2 Asia-Pacific was formed, Crown announced to start retiring the Vodafone brand and rebranding their operations under Orange in Africa and O2 elsewhere. This has prompted O2 New Zealand (formerly 2degrees) to negotiate a takeover of Vodafone New Zealand from private equity companies, in order to successfully finish the Vodafone brand's discontinuation.
Global operations
Europe
O2's new logo, used since Crown's acquisition in 2020.
O2 is operated in Europe by Crown Cellular plc, except in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Cyprus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Malta, where they operate as joint ventures, and in Bulgaria and Ireland, where it's franchised to OWL Ventures's telecom division Hoot.
A minor exception is Spain, which was launched in 2018 as a MVNO, and operated as such until 2020 when Vodafone Spain and the O2 Spain MVNO merged to become a fully fledged operator.
| Country | Launch | Operator |
|---|---|---|
 United Kingdom
|
2002 | Crown (50% sale to Liberty Media pending) |
 Germany
|
2002 | Crown |
 Czech Republic
|
2006 | Crown (through O2 Czech Republic) |
 Slovakia
|
2006 | Crown/O2 Czech Republic (through O2 Slovakia) |
 Ireland
|
2006 (original) 2021 (revived) |
Hoot (under license from Crown) |
 Spain
|
2018 (MVNO) 2020 (full MNO) |
Crown |
 Austria
|
2020 | Crown |
 Italy
|
2020 | Crown |
 Serbia
|
2021 | Crown |
 Ukraine
|
2021 | Crown (80%) Ukrtelecom (20%) |
 Bulgaria
|
2021 | Hoot (under license from Crown) |
 Croatia
|
2021 | Crown |
 Montenegro
|
2021 | Crown |
 Belarus
|
2021 | Crown |
File:Flag of Macedonia.png Macedonia North Macedonia
|
2021 | Crown |
 Slovenia
|
2021 | Crown |
 Hungary
|
2021 | Crown |
 Faroe Islands
|
2021 | Crown |
 Belgium Luxembourg
|
2021 | Crown |
 Lithuania
|
2021 | Crown |
 Latvia
|
2021 | Crown |
 Poland
|
2021 | Crown |
 Switzerland
|
2021 | Crown |
 Russia
|
2021 | Crown (50%) Rostelecom (50%) |
 Georgia
|
2021 | Crown |
 Armenia
|
2021 | Crown |
 Portugal
|
2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Romania.png Romania | 2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Albania.png Albania | 2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Malta.png Malta | 2021 | Crown (50%) Monaco Telecom (50%) |
| File:Flag of Greece.png Greece | 2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Liechtenstein.png Liechtenstein | 2021 | Crown (50%) Swisscom (50%) |
 France
|
2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Cyprus.png Cyprus | 2021 | Crown (50%) CYTA (50%) |
| File:Flag of San Marino.png San Marino | 2021 | Crown |
 Estonia
|
2021 | Crown (50%) Elisa (50%) |
 Sweden
|
2021 | Crown |
 Denmark
|
2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Iceland.png Iceland | 2021 | Crown (75%) Sýn (25%) |
| File:Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina.png Bosnia and Herzegovina | 2021 | Crown (80%) Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina (20%) |
| File:Flag of Kosovo.png Kosovo | 2021 | Crown (50%) Telekom Slovenije (50%) |
 Turkey
|
2021 | Crown |
 Norway
|
2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Azerbaijan.png Azerbaijan | 2021 | Crown |
| File:Flag of Andorra.png Andorra | 2021 | Crown (50%) The Government of Andorra (50%) |
| Jersey and Guernsey Isle of Man |
2021 | Crown |
In addition of O2, Crown Cellular plc also operates Tesco Mobile under a 50/50 joint venture with Tesco. Crown also operates a MVNO under their own network, called giffgaff. They rebranded Proximus TV as O2 TV in Belgium during the Styhon Battersea Telecom/Crown merger.
They also have a venture capital division Crown Initiatives (formerly Bouygues Telecom Initiatives), a R&D center called O2 Innovation Center (formerly Telenet Innovation Center), a 25% stake in T-Mobile Netherlands, and a 49% stake in the Swiss company e-Fon AG.
O2 also runs Lycamobile Transform Holdings JV with Telenet, Polkomtel (Plus), Three Ireland, Swisscom, Orange Germany (ex-Vodafone) and Telekom Romania, established to help transfer customers from Lycamobile to O2.
Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa
Crown owns a 34% stake in Orange Africa, which operates in Middle East and Africa. They have an office in Johannesburg, which is responsible for holding the stake and running the company from their side.
O2 Asia-Pacific came to be through a merger of Viettel Global, and Asian operations owned by Hoot (who acquired Trilogy International Partners early on) and Crown. It is a joint venture between Hoot and Crown, with Viettel being part of four joint ventures within O2 Asia-Pacific. Crown is considering rebranding all acquired operations under the O2 brand by the end of 2021. They have offices in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait City, Hong Kong and Delhi.
They operate the following branches of O2 Asia-Pacific:
| Country | Launch under O2 | Operator | Previous brand(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| File:Flag of Hong Kong.png Hong Kong File:Flag of Macau.png Macau |
2021 | Crown/Hoot (50%) Sun Hung Kai Properties (50%) |
SmarTone |
| File:Flag of Brunei.png Brunei | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | DST DSTIncomm DST Solutions DSTFacom |
| File:Flag of Bhutan.png Bhutan | 2021 | Crown/Hoot (50%) Tashi Group (50%) |
TashiCell |
| File:Flag of Turkmenistan.png Turkmenistan | 2021 | Crown/Hoot (50%) Turkmentelecom (50%) |
Altyn Asyr TM Cell |
 Taiwan
|
2021 | Crown/Hoot | FarEasTone |
| File:Flag of Sri Lanka.png Sri Lanka | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | Airtel Hutch |
| File:Flag of Nepal.png Nepal | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | Ncell |
| File:Flag of Vietnam.png Vietnam | 2021 | Crown/Hoot (50%) VNPT (50%) |
Vietnamobile Vinaphone |
| File:Flag of Bangladesh.png Bangladesh | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | Robi Banglalink |
| File:Flag of Malaysia.png Malaysia | 2021 | Crown/Hoot (75%) Public float (20%) EPF (5%) |
Celcom (and yoodoo) Digi (and Tapp) |
| Marshall Islands New Caledonia Niue Guam Northern Mariana Islands Norfolk Island Palau Solomon Islands Tuvalu Fiji Cook Islands Kiribati French Polynesia Nauru Vanuatu Tonga Samoa Federated States of Micronesia |
2021 (under the name O2 Pacific) | Crown/Hoot (75%) NTT DoCoMo (12%) The Fiji government (9%, through Amalgamated Telecom Holdings Limited) The Government of the Federated States of Micronesia (2%) Samoa and Cook Islands governments (1% each) |
Vodafone (Fiji, Kiribati, French Polynesia, Samoa and Cook Islands) DoCoMo Pacific (Guam and Northern Mariana Islands) Pacific Mobile Telecom (French Polynesia) Digicel (Fiji, Nauru, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga) FSM Telecom (Micronesia) Telecom Vanuatu Limited (Vanuatu) N/A (other territories) |
| File:Flag of Papua New Guinea.png Papua New Guinea | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | Digicel |
 India (including British Indian Ocean Territory)
|
2021 | Qualis/Hoot (80%) Aditya Birla Group (12%) Private equity (8%) |
Vi and Airtel (India) Sure Mobile (BIOT) |
| File:Flag of Maldives.png Maldives | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | Ooredoo |
| File:Flag of Myanmar.png Myanmar | 2021 | Crown/Hoot (50%) Viettel (25%) Star High Telecom (13%) Myanmar National Telecom Holding (12%) |
Ooredoo Mytel |
| File:Flag of Cambodia.png Cambodia | 2021 | Crown/Hoot (50%) Viettel (50%) |
Metfone |
| File:Flag of East Timor.png East Timor | 2021 | Crown/Hoot (50%) Viettel (50%) |
Telemor |
| File:Flag of Laos.png Laos | 2021 | Lao Asia Telecom (50%) Crown/Hoot (25%) Viettel (25%) |
Unitel |
 Kazakhstan
|
2021 | Crown/Hoot | Kcell KazakhTelecom/Altel Tele2 Kazakhstan Beeline |
| File:Flag of Tajikistan.png Tajikistan | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | MegaFon |
| File:Flag of Pakistan.png Pakistan | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | Telenor |
 Singapore
|
2021 | Crown/Hoot (51%) Temasek Holdings (49%) |
Singtel |
 New Zealand
|
2021 | Crown/Hoot | 2degrees |
| File:Flag of Uzbekistan.png Uzbekistan | 2021 | Crown/Hoot | Beeline |
 Australia
|
2021 | Crown/Hoot (through O2 Australia; 50%) Qualis (50%) |
TPG Telecom
(company) |
 Indonesia
|
2021 | Crown/Hoot | 3 Indonesia (prepaid services) XL Axiata (and XL) Axis Telecom Indosat Ooredoo |
O2 Brunei owns:
- Kristal-Astro - joint venture with Astro Malaysia
- Kristal Media Sdn Bhd - radio station division
- KristalFM
O2 Asia-Pacific also owns Digicel Sports, a 35% stake in Telkomsel, a 55% stake in Telenor Microfinance Bank, a 23% stake in AIS, a 75% stake in Koryolink, and a minority stake in Globe Telecom. They also own two MVNOs: Virgin Mobile in Australia; and O2 Prioritas in Indonesia, the latter which is a merger between 3 Indonesia's postpaid services and XL Prioritas.
They license their Vodafone brand (inherited from Styhon Battersea's acquisition of Vodafone Group) to Vodafone New Zealand, and they have a deal to license it until either Crown acquires the company or until the brand is "forcefully retired".
They have strategic alliances with China Unicom, Gibtelecom, StarHub, LG Uplus, du, Telecom Argentina, SFR, Elisa, MTS Russia, Viva MTS, TDC A/S, Monaco Telecom, and TELE Greenland; as well as with Hoot in Dominican Republic, Japan and Canada.
Latin America
O2 Latin America is a telecommunications provider in the Caribbean and Latin America, owned by Crown with its foundation finished in December 2020. It was founded through a merger of Scarlet's Latin American operations (Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten), Movistar's operations in Latin America, as well as mobile operators Digicel, Tigo, Entel and Liberty Latin America.
It's the most leading operator across most countries it serves, with it holding second place in Bermuda, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, Nicaragua and Suriname, rivaling Claro and state-owned telecoms.
O2 Latin America does not operate in Cuba or the Dominican Republic. Their subsidiaries include O2 Latin America Business (a consolidation of Liberty Latin America's B2B operations), Digicel Sports and Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico. In addition, O2 Latin America aslo runs MVNOs on its own network: Tuenti outside Spain under license from Styhon Battersea, as well as Virgin Mobile Latin America, outside Mexico and Brasil, which became a joint venture with Virgin Group as an extension of their contract.
| Replaced | Countries |
|---|---|
| Cable & Wireless Communications (including FLOW) | Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Barbados British Virgin Islands Cayman Islands Dominica Grenada Jamaica Montserrat Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Turks and Caicos Islands |
| Speednet (including Smart) | Belize |
| Digicel | Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Aruba Barbados Bermuda Bonaire British Virgin Islands Cayman Islands Curaçao Dominica El Salvador Grenada Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana Guyana Haiti Montserrat Panama Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia,Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Suriname Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Islands |
| Tigo | Bolivia Colombia El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Jamaica Paraguay |
| BTC | the Bahamas |
| Entel | Chile Peru |
| Movistar | Argentina Chile Colombia Costa Rica Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Nicaragua Panama Peru Uruguay Venezuela Mexico |
| UTS (including Chippie and + Movil) | Bonaire Curaçao Panama |
| Chile | |
| Cabletica | Costa Rica |
| Cable & Wireless | Panama |
| Vivo | Brazil |
| Scarlet | Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten |
| Sure | Falkland Islands |
Divisions
Lunar
- See also Lunar Onyx One and Lunar Jade
Lunar is a smartphone brand owned by Crown Cellular.
With the acquisition of some of Vodafone's European operations, they received patents and development staff related to their Vodafone Smart line of smartphones and IoT electronics. Crown also acquired assets of Essential Products, for future R&D projects.
With these acquisitions, Crown decided to start development on a smartphone to be exclusively sold in retail locations operating under Orange in Africa and Middle East, SoftBank in Japan, Telstra in Australia, Rogers in Canada, Verizon in the United States, and O2 in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Lunar Alliance
- See also: Lunar Mobile Services
Crown established the Lunar Alliance, which would start work on the research and development on Lunar Onyx One, the Lunar OS (based on Android) and Lunar Mobile Services.
Lunar Alliance aims to open a privacy-focused but still developer-friendly system out of Android, with the help from several Android fork development teams and foundations such as /e/ Foundation, as well as the "perfect smartphone" for consumers, especially that of Crown's telecom division O2.
With Crown's sister companies' expertise (such as Duracell on batteries), Vuori has also initiated cross-company collaboration under the alliance.
A legal battle between Crown and Google (et al) prompted the Lunar Alliance to pursue marketing the device as a "device for the misfits", criticizing, among other cons, Apple's lack of customization and Android's reputation for bloatware and vulnerability. Epic Games's participation in the legal battle also opened doors for a possibility of Fortnite becoming exclusive to Lunar OS.
Special edition products
Lunar Onyx One has numerous color variants named and modeled after gemstones (except for the white variant), mainly as exclusives to respective telecoms that sell them: rhodolite magenta for T-Mobile, citrine orange for Orange, platinum white with glossy finish for SoftBank, ruby red for Rogers and Verizon (the red variant is also available in other stores under the Product Red initiative) and zircon blue for O2. The emerald green and amethyst purple variants were made exclusively for Hoot and OWL employees only.
Lunar Onyx One also had a Coca-Cola themed variant sold in Latin America and Asia, especially Mexico, Brazil and Japan.
As part of the Vuorensuu project, Lunar announced a sweepstake with two variants; the iridescent variant (inspired by black opal and bismuth) would be sent to 185 winners, while the golden variant would be sent to 15 winners with tours to Vuorensuu once it finishes construction.
Legality status
Due to the establishment and purpose of the consortium, Crown has been in a legal battle with Google and the remaining members of Open Handset Alliance (Broadcom, Telus, Nepal Telecom, VisualOn, eBay, Omron, PacketVideo, AKM Semiconductor, Garmin, Acer, Lenovo, MiPS, Renesas, ST Microelectronics, Wind River, NEC and Wipro) on numerous cases, such as the legal statuses of the Lunar Mobile Services and Lunar OS concepts. Soon, Crown was joined by Amazon, Kyocera, Foxconn/Sharp, Hoot, Tencent, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facebook, Samsung, Huawei and Epic Games.
Features
Lunar Onyx One is rumored to have an infrared spectrometer and a thermal camera.
Future
Lunar has yet to release Onyx One and Jade smartphones, but Crown and Hoot are optimistic about the brand's future. Crown has mentioned about plans to expand the brand into smart watches and smart glasses, if the management of both PTG and its parent company Vuori allows so. Lunar will prioritize third-world countries over others in terms of low pricing and marketing.
Members
The memberships of China Unicom and China Mobile are still pending due to the uncertain trading ties between the U.S. and China.
| Owners | Network operators | Device manufacturers | Component manufacturers | Software developers | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vuori | Crown Cellular plc
|
Pegatron Technology Group
|
Pegatron Technology Group
|
Pegatron Technology Group
|
Pegatron Technology Group
|
| OWL Ventures |
|
Fairchild
|
Fairchild
|
Orange Labs | |
| Other companies and joint ventures | O2 Latin America Orange Africa Deutsche Telekom NTT DoCoMo KDDI |
Foxconn | Dover Corporation Texas Instruments |
Myriad Group Apache Software Foundation Kaspersky Lab Nintendo Endeavor Streaming Adobe Systems |
Monotype Imaging Accenture Borqs |
Nintendo became part of the Lunar Alliance through a partnership between them and Vuori, which would see Mario games get optimized for the Lunar Onyx One.
Crown Enterprise Solutions
|
This article/section is incomplete. |
| Please help this article by expanding or finishing it; if you have permission from the page owner. Additional information: None. |
- Crown International Carrier - international carrier division
- Technicolor USA
- Bluefish Communications - consulting division
- Vodafone Automative
- Telehouse America
Slogans
Crown (corporate)
- "Here and there too" (2020-present)
O2
- "See what you can do" (2006-2008)
- "It's your O2" (2006-2008)
- "We’re better, connected" (2008-2013)
- "Be more dog" (2013-2016)
- "More for you" (2016-2018)
- "Breathe it all in" (2018-2020)
- "Breathtaking" (2020-present)