Our word is our bond. Unfortunately, it's a number. 007
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EC clears Orange T-Mobile merger
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION has cleared the merger of Orange UK and T-Mobile UK.
Today the EC competition committee decided that the firms could go ahead with their merger, but only if they enter into a joint network sharing arrangement with Hutchinson 3G (3) relating to the 1800MHz level spectrum.
"I am happy that we managed to resolve the competition issues in this case quickly in close cooperation with the Member State concerned," said European Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia.
Having investigated the merger, the EC decided that it could see no direct competition concerns relating to providing services to end users, or consumers, or the wholesale telecoms market. However, it did have concerns about Hutchinson, which it called the smallest mobile network operator in the UK.
It added that the merger of the two larger players could have threatened the existence of the firm, and could have created a system in which they could charge what they want for access to the 1800MHz spectrum.
In a statement the regulators added, "In order to address the competition concerns identified by the Commission, the parties concluded a revised agreement with 3UK which will secure its position as a competitive force on the market, and offered to divest 15 MHz of spectrum at the 1800 MHz level. The Commission concluded that the commitments offered by the parties remedy the identified competition concerns." µ
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It is evident that this merger between Orange and T-Mobile caused some tension between the European Commission and UK’s Office of Fair trading.
Jury Team believes the United Kingdom’s trade links can be maintained fairly even the UK were not to be part of the EU. Such examples include Norway and Switzerland, who are Europe’s two richest countries. Also an agreed merger by the European Commision to form the biggest mobile phone company brings in to repute the long term competitiveness of the market.
Jury Team will demand a referendum on the status of the UK in Europe. 83% of people in the UK (75% across the EU) wanted to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which they believed had been promised to them in the 2005 Labour Manifesto. Ireland received a referendum but the UK didn’t. T
Jury Team, along with the majority of people of the UK, deserve to have their say on the role their country takes in Europe.
Airwaves are a precious natural resource which cannot be created. Instead of fully revoking half of the bandwidth and selling it to another bidder, creating a few monopolies with lots of crucial bandwidth which they cannot fully utilise is a very poor decision and will lead to higher tariffs, less jobs and mismanagement of UK bandwidth. UK mobile tariffs are one of the highest in the world. Instead of creating 'minute factories' like elsewhere, trying to benefit the whole country by using the spectrum efficiently, it will just waste spectrum lying unused in the hands of a few players. While in some countries, phone calls and mobile internet are much cheaper due to fierce competition and innovation, here it seems going the other way.