The mother of invention
While it's hard to appreciate it at the time, one of the long term benefits of a recession is how it forces companies to think more creatively about how they do business.
Where this strategic lateral thinking may have been left on the back-burner while everyone was making tonnes of money, it becomes a necessity when it all goes wrong.
So today we have the announcement that rival mobile phone giants: UK based Vodafone and Spanish Telefónica - the owner of O2, are going to share network infrastructure in a number of European countries including the UK.
This sort of thing obviously makes sense in principle. Why have several parallel networks if it's viable to just have one and share it? After all the main areas in which these companies compete mainly concerns factors unrelated to the network itself like pricing, marketing, etc.
This collaboration, which may also include other areas like transmission services, is expected to save the two companies hundreds of millions of Euros over the next ten years. Of course the deal is also being positioned as good news for customers and for the environment
Matthew Key, CEO of Telefónica Europe, said: "This industry-leading collaboration means that Telefónica and Vodafone will continue to compete strongly against each other in local markets, while giving our customers enhanced mobile coverage in more places, using fewer mast sites."
