O2 (UK) the England rugby team, and in 2003 launched a mobile video service allowing customers to download or stream video content related to the 2003 Rugby World Cup. The initial deal was signed in 1995, as Cellnet, and then renewed in 2000 as BT Cellnet. In 2005, Telefónica O2 extended their involvement in rugby union, signing a new deal with the England rugby team and the Rugby Football Union, as well as O2 rugbyclass and Premier Rugby Ltd for the English Premiership. Their latest renewal of the sponsorship was in 2016, which will run for five years until September 2021. Additionally,
O2 (UK) 2016, the European Commission officially blocked the tie-up of O2 and Three, arguing that the merger would reduce consumer choice and lead to a higher cost of services. In September 2016, Telefónica appointed a number of investment banks to sell the business to investors, ahead of a stock market flotation. On 6 December 2018, a major disruption to the O2 network, caused by faulty software, left up to 32 million users (including those on MVNOs) without access to data services (on both 3G and 4G) for up to 24 hours. During the outage, some voice and text services suffered from