Franco-German pact
It looks like the UK is about to have a new biggest mobile phone operator after the EU has cleared the proposed merger of Orange UK (owned by France Telecom) and T-Mobile UK (owned by Deutsche Telekom).
The deal was first announced last September but, as you would expect, when two of the leading players in a market want to merge it warrants close scrutiny from regulators to make sure the deal won't harm competition.
"I am happy that we managed to resolve the competition issues in this case quickly in close cooperation with the Member State concerned," said competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia. He was referring to the Office of Fair Trading, which looked like getting involved independently, but has now indicated that it is happy with the EU ruling.
The approval is contingent on the merged operation giving up a quarter of its combined 1,800 MHz spectrum and amending its existing network sharing agreement with 3. The biggest concerns about the merger of the third and fourth largest MNOs in the UK concerned its effect on the fifth largest.
The 1,800 MHz spectrum is especially important for high-speed services, such as LTE (4G). The combined operation would own the vast majority of that spectrum, hence the undertaking to free up a quarter of it.
Here's a video produced by Orange's and T-Mobile's respective UK bosses - Tom Alexander and Richard Moat - when the merger was first announced.
