T-Mobile to sell itself before suing itself

THE DAY before it is due to appear in a British High Court, T-Mobile has announced that it hopes to sell its 50 per cent stake in Virgin Mobile back to Sir Richard Branson's company for around £500 million, according to the Independent on Sunday.

Virgin Mobile hopes to turnover roughly £400 million in 2003. The admission was made by T-Mobile UK's MD, Brian McBride who took over from Harris Jones earlier this year.

The decision by Virgin Mobile to take T-Mobile to court - for failing to provide it access to MMS (fototext) amongst other things - was taken by the Virgin Mobile board - which includes McBride, of course. At the centre of the dispute appears to be the issue of how you define a Virgin customer.

Since they're nearly all pre-paid customers, if they don't make any calls are they still active? T-Mobile hasn't limited itself to restricting Virgin's MMS efforts - it has also made it very difficult for the company to offer Premium Rate SMS (text) services.

A T-Mobile spokeswoman also admitted that, "The companies want to wrap this deal up as soon as possible because it's in the best interests of both."

Industry rumours are that T-Mobile plans some pretty competitive tariffs in the run up to the festive season and a deal over Virgin would prevent T-Mobile from competing head on with itself. Virgin announced its handset line-up for Q4 2003 range back in September. µ