In the UK, T-Mobile and Orange To Merge 74
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."
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2, Interesting)
...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 [theregister.co.uk] 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...
Re:Monopoly? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:German Tmobile and "France" Tcom? (Score:4, Interesting)
and T-Mobile owns 93% of Era which is the third largest operator in Poland.
Not spam but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Since somebody is clearly removing all the posts that are actual spam, couldn't they remove ones like this while they're about it?