O2 (UK) BT subsidiaries: Esat Digifone in Ireland, Viag Interkom in Germany and Telfort Mobiel in the Netherlands. The rebranding was supported by a European advertising campaign, which began on 16 April 2002, across all four countries, at a cost of £130 million. The main launch campaign ran from 18 June and was developed by Vallance Carruthers Coleman Priest, working alongside brand consultancy Lambie-Nairn, creators of the "O2" brand identity. In March 2005, mmO2 restructured its shares and the company was relisted as O2 plc. On 30 November 2005, O2 agreed to a takeover by Telefónica, a Spanish telecommunications company, for £17.7
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