Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), the UK joint venture between cable conglomerate Liberty Global and Telefonica, has announced its selection of Hiya, to provide spam protection services for its mobile customers. The deal also applies to its giffgaff MVNO offering, and will rely on a suite of AI-based tools. Hiya claims to provide its protection services to 250 million consumers, via its operator customer base – which includes AT&T, Comcast, EE, Ericsson, MasMovil (Orange), Rogers, Samsung, and Telenor. Hiya was spun out of Whitepages (an online directory service) in 2016, is based in Seattle, and has 160 employees servicing a total user base north of 400 million, spanning 40 countries. VMO2 already has a firewall deployment that blocked 89 million spam…