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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."
However, it is likely that competition authorities in the UK and EU will probe the deal.
Is there ever any news of mergers that hit Slashdot that aren't probed by the EU?
Supposedly the new company would have around 37% of the market, which sounds daft given that there are only 60 million people in the UK. What this doesn't account for is the number of people who have both personal mobiles and mobiles supplied by their employers, eg for on-call purposes.
O2 have around 28% and Vodafone 25%, so there isn't that much in it. The issue the regulators seem to have is that the UK market will go from five major (O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3) players to four, and the merged Orange/T-Mobile would have a very large retail presence as well.
There are a couple of virtual providers out there as well. IIRC Virgin use the T-Mobile network, so this merger may have an impact on them.
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.
As MVNOs they have contacts with the operators, virgin with tmobile and tesco with O2 but any change in ownership would allow the respective MVNOs to get out of the contract and use a different network, so i doubt there would be much difference in price in the short time. Although the register mentions in the article this maybe a reason why they have decided to do a 50 : 50 merger so the change in ownership clause does not become an issue.
In the UK, people annoyed by retardedly phrased Slashdot headlines.
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).
The barrier isn't that high as long as the EU keeps doing what it's been doing. MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) is the new thing, this has already taken off in Denmark for instance, it's fairly cheap to start up and due to regulations you aren't being bled dry by the actual owner of the network. It is however fairly new and quite a few kinks has to be ironed out.
...given the high barriers of entry to the market place (i.e. it's not really possible) and the low number of competitors.
Didn't 3 prove over the last 5 years that entry to the market-place is perfectly possible? And, as The Register notes:
The UK mobile industry is one of the most competitive in the world
So I don't imagine anyone's going to stop this...
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.
This merger makes me very happy indeed. One of my kids is a lawyer specialising in telecoms competition issues. Recession? What recession?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I have read that such a deal would probably result in a total monopoly on the back end for Ericsson.
Thus the networks (Vodafone, O2, Orange-Mobile and Three) could have their operating costs pushed up, which would be passed on to the consumer.
"There is nothing nice about Steve Jobs and nothing evil about Bill Gates." - Chuck Peddle
Not really, most of the MVNO's have been bought by the operator that owns their network. There are no large independent MVNO's anymore.
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Did they already extend into Poland?
There aren't going to be any more spectrum auctions for a while. Three got in by bidding in the last auction, and they aren't exactly that new to the market. Hutchison Wampoa, the Chinese company that owns Three was the original owner of Orange.
Since somebody is clearly removing all the posts that are actual spam, couldn't they remove ones like this while they're about it?
Seconded. I moved from Orange to T-Mobile, despite the fact I was largely happy with the Orange service, to get the G1.
I moved from Orange to Three when I got my HTC Dream because Orange's data price structure is totally uncompetitive with pretty much any of the other MNOs....
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