When the news broke during September 2009 that Orange had purchased T-Mobile, signatures were expected to be scrawled on the bottom of important documents well before the end of the year. However, these plans didn’t take into account an investigation by the European Commission and the Office of Fair Trading.
Now though, the EU have finally signed off on the merger – after the OFT decided not to hold an investigation, despite a push from rival UK networks – allowing the formation on the UK’s largest mobile operator, who will control 37% of the market and have a customer base of 30 million users.
The EC ruling came after T-Mobile and Orange agreed to various concessions, including the release of 15MHz of the shared 60MHz total control of the key 1800MHz spectrum, which could potentially be used for the future 4G network. T-Mobile also reached an agreement with 3, who will continue to lease network space from them.
Not everybody was smiling though, as The Times are reporting that anywhere up to 2000 jobs could be lost as a result of the merger, and an independent policy advisory board, the Communications Consumer Panel, stressed that it was important for the move not to disrupt the competitiveness of the market, and that a longer investigation would have likely secured that.
News Source :- http://www.dialaphone.co.uk/
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