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In the UK, T-Mobile and Orange To Merge

Posted by kdawson on from the what-is-this-competition-of-which-you-speak dept.

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."

2 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Monopoly? by mrsmiggs · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  2. In the UK... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In the UK, people annoyed by retardedly phrased Slashdot headlines.