O2 (UK) telephone line and broadband business of Telefónica UK, trading under the O2 and Be brands. The company agreed to pay £180 million initially, followed by a further £20 million after all customers had been transferred to Sky's existing business. The sale was subject to regulatory approval in April 2013, and was subsequently approved by the Office of Fair Trading on 16 May 2013. O2 began trialling a Near Field Communication (NFC) payment system in 2007. In 2009, O2 was in discussions with large retailers, such as Tesco and W. H. Smith, for the deployment of the necessary electronic point of
O2 (UK) manufacturing Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in mobile phones in the United Kingdom. O2 and Vodafone signed a deal in June 2012 which will see the two companies 'pool' their network technology, creating a single national grid of 18,500 transmitter sites. Both networks will continue to carry their own independent mobile spectrum. In July 2012, O2 had to apologise to almost 8 million customers after a network switching subsystem failure led to a 24-hour blackout of the service across the UK and Ireland. The problem, which prevented a third of its customers' phones registering on the network, also affected customers