O2 (UK) cent share of Cellnet for £3.15 billion. Cellnet had five million customers at the time of its acquisition. The company was later rebranded as BT Cellnet , and it became a part of BT Wireless, a group of companies owned by BT. BT announced on 3 September 2001 that the BT Wireless business would be spun off from the main group as a newly listed holding company, mmO2 plc, operating under the "O2" brand. Shareholders approved the plan at an extraordinary general meeting on 23 October 2001. BT Cellnet relaunched as "O2" on 18 June 2002, along with other former
O2 (UK) of MVNO networks Tesco Mobile and Giffgaff. To apologise for this, O2 announced that it would be giving hundreds of thousands of its customers compensation for the issue. Pay monthly customers received a 10 per cent discount on their bill whereas Pay As You Go users received a 10 per cent refund on their first top up in September. On 24 November 2014, it was reported that BT were in talks to buy back O2, while at the same time BT confirmed that it was also in talks to buy EE. BT subsequently entered into exclusive talks with EE. On