In the UK, T-Mobile and Orange To Merge

EthanV2 sends in BBC coverage of the merger plans of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK. "T-Mobile and Orange plan to merge their UK businesses, creating a mobile phone giant with 28.4 million customers. If completed, a deal between Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile and Orange owner France Telecom would see a firm with sales of €9.4 B (£7.0 B, $13.4 B). It would be the UK's largest provider, overtaking Telefonica's O2, with about 37% of the mobile market. ... However, it is likely that competition authorities in the UK and EU will probe the deal."

Comments

Re:Monopoly?

[mrsmiggs]

In 2007 we had 71 million handsets in the UK and the BBC think that the combined company would have 37% market share. It doesn't look like this would be classed as a monopoly however we could be well on our way to a cartel with only O2 and Vodafone in position to be competitive with the new merged company and 3 basically tied to the new company because of their extensive Network sharing with T-Mobile.

Both the EU and UK (Competition Commission and/or Ofcom) regulators will be paying a great deal of attention to the merger, given the high barriers of entry to the market place (i.e. it's not really possible) and the low number of competitors.

Re:Monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that anything over 25% would legally be a monopoly in the UK (I know technically it's not a monopoly, but in a rare case of foresight the monopoplies and mergers laws took into account that 25%+ is enough to distort a market).

Re:Monopoly?

[jonbryce]

If you read the summary, it is about 37% of the market. There are more cellphones than people in the UK. Pretty much everyone has a cellphone, and a lot of people have more than one - eg work cellphone and personal cellphone.