[carguy143]

I hope Three's data speed doesn't drop as a result of all the extra customers from o2. Remember, when Orange and T Mobile formed EE they had to decommission some cell sites in the interest of competition.

[jabbamk1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by carguy143

I hope Three's data speed doesn't drop as a result of all the extra customers from o2. Remember, when Orange and T Mobile formed EE they had to decommission some cell sites in the interest of competition.

And now EE have the largest and fastest 3G/4G network in the UK.....

So not sure what you're getting at?

[jchamier]

Quote:

Originally Posted by carguy143

decommission some cell sites in the interest of competition.

Er, no, not for competition reasons but because there was no point having old Orange slow cells sites next to fast MBNL / T-Mobile sites. To save money and reduced duplication.

[1manonthebog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jchamier

Er, no, not for competition reasons but because there was no point having old Orange slow cells sites next to fast MBNL / T-Mobile sites. To save money and reduced duplication.

In NI they decommissioned all T-Mobile sites which was useful, sort of took the attraction of the merger with signal reduced, but in saying that EE has excellent coverage now, 4G everywhere.

[jchamier]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1manonthebog

In NI they decommissioned all T-Mobile sites which was useful, sort of took the attraction of the merger with signal reduced, but in saying that EE has excellent coverage now, 4G everywhere.

I think there was no MBNL in NI so EE had to choose one set to keep and one set to turn off. I guess the T-mobile ones were less, so turned those off and upgraded the Orange ones.

[mogzyboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbamk1

And now EE have the largest and fastest 3G/4G network in the UK.....

So not sure what you're getting at?

To be fair, it's only the fastest because they give small amounts of data to use on it.

It all serves to make the press releases look good.

[jabbamk1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mogzyboy

To be fair, it's only the fastest because they give small amounts of data to use on it.

It all serves to make the press releases look good.

Some would argue that Three had a faster network before EE's 4G launch and that was with unlimited data.

[Graeme89]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mogzyboy

To be fair, it's only the fastest because they give small amounts of data to use on it.

It all serves to make the press releases look good.

Wouldnt agree with that as o2 speeds are dyre(Where I used to use it) and they offer very little data limits

[PaulLFC]

I currently pay Three £12.90 p/m for 600 mins, 5000 texts and unlimited 4G. If this goes through I assume it will "regrettably necessitate" that my costs "must" increase - probably by quite a large percentage, as well.

[DiandalScotland]

I , My friends and Family are all on giffgaff with unlimited data £15 per month.

I hope giffgaff can still operate if this deal does go through.

[planetf1]

The consolidation to 3 networks has been happening in multiple countries in the EU. BT/EE would have the most spectrum, but Vodafone, and 3/O2 would be fairly comparable. Three healthy strong players.. probably quite a decent thing for competition.

I don't think we'll see it thrown out on competition grounds

[Zee_Bukhari]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DiandalScotland

I , My friends and Family are all on giffgaff with unlimited data £15 per month.

I hope giffgaff can still operate if this deal does go through.

giffgaff don't offer unlimited data for £15 though, its £18 increasing to £20 in April, Three do offer unlimited data for £15 though.

Difference is giffgaff don't offer truly unlimited data, Three does.

giffgaff will just be gobbled up by Three or sold off.

[Aye Up]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zee_Bukhari

giffgaff don't offer unlimited data for £15 though, its £18 increasing to £20 in April, Three do offer unlimited data for £15 though.

Difference is giffgaff don't offer truly unlimited data, Three does.

giffgaff will just be gobbled up by Three or sold off.

Well it isn't truly unlimited, AYCE has its limits. I suspect that will be one of the first features to be put to bed after any potential merger.

There isn't a network in the UK that offers personal customers truly unlimited data, no matter what they might claim.

The days of unlimited data are well and truly buried now, this is the area networks will make their money, fixed amounts of data used how the customer wants.

[Thine Wonk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aye Up

Well it isn't truly unlimited, AYCE has its limits. I suspect that will be one of the first features to be put to bed after any potential merger.

There isn't a network in the UK that offers personal customers truly unlimited data, no matter what they might claim.

The days of unlimited data are well and truly buried now, this is the area networks will make their money, fixed amounts of data used how the customer wants.

It is all you can eat, it may be subject to Trafficsense, but aside from that it is unlimited. Giffgaff is around 10-15GB before you risk being banned from buying the unlimited add-on again.

[jabbamk1]

New FT Article-

I'd class this under "Opinion".

Quote:

Merger of O2 and Three calls for serious scrutiny

British consumers might be forgiven for wondering what problem the proposed £10bn merger of the mobile providers O2 and Three is designed to solve.
Plans announced last week to weld together the country’s second- and fourth-largest networks certainly threaten to create an industry leader of impressive scale. With 32m customers, it would be Britain’s largest, putting Vodafone and BT — fresh from announcing the purchase of EE from T-Mobile of Germany and France’s Orange — firmly in the shade.

The deal may also allow the pair to achieve substantial savings. Initial estimates suggest they could cut expenses by £400m per annum, equivalent to about 50 per cent of Three’s running costs.

But it is far from clear how much these benefits will actually help their legions of subscribers. While Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong-based owner of Three, is holding out the possibility of better coverage, not least of Britain’s still embryonic 4G services, the real impetus for the transaction appears to lie not in improved customer experience — but in cutting competition and bolstering returns.
Hutch is following a well-worn script. If the deal is consummated, the UK would be the latest European country to cut the number of mobile providers below the four generally deemed necessary to preserve a market in which competition, rather than regulation, is the mechanism for setting prices.
Germany, Austria and Ireland have recently allowed deals that reduce the number of networks to three. In each case regulatory remedies were imposed to preserve competition compromised by consolidation.

With Germany and Ireland, the deals are too recent to observe their impact on pricing. But in Austria it is possible to see results, and (for customers at least) they are not pretty. In spite of the remedies, mobile pricing has increased sharply. The market leader, Telekom Austria, raised tariffs for smartphone users by nearly 50 per cent last year.

Nor was consolidation necessary to stimulate lagging capital expenditure. In the years before the merger, Austrian operators pumped money into their networks in spite of the market’s four-player structure.

European operators argue that consolidation is vital to bring sanity to an industry they say has been brought to its knees by cut-throat competition. They point to the low margins achieved in Europe relative to the US, where two giant operators dominate the national market.
Boosting returns to US levels, Europeans claim, would allow them to provide the sort of services customers want, such as exclusive media content they can run on smartphones.

The snag is that European mobile operators do not have unsustainably low profitability. True, returns on capital employed have come down from a very high 20 per cent five years ago to just over 10 per cent. But they remain well above operators’ cost of capital — at least for those that are sensibly capitalised.
Three is a good example of how competition can both spur and reward fresh thinking. Created explicitly as an additional operator in 2000 to hold prices down, it has in the past 11 years built a profitable business.

It has done so through innovation. Three was among the first operators to spot the importance of the smartphone market, and to design products and tariffs to support its expansion. It is, for instance, the only UK operator to offer customers an upgrade to 4G without charge.

Stripping the UK market of its fourth player will place the onus on the regulator to substitute for this competitive stimulus. Most of the remedies applied in “four to three” markets have focused on forging a privileged position for so-called “virtual” operators, which run services perched on one of the main operators’ networks. But by their nature these entities can neither lead on price nor drive system improvements.

National regulators have tended to be wary about consolidation. The German regulator fought hard to thwart the merger of Telefónica/O2 and E-Plus, but was overruled by European authorities, which took the lead because of the supranational nature of the parent companies. Brussels tends to take a more detached view of local competition, focusing on wider questions of competitiveness and investment.

It would be a mistake if the UK went the same way — especially on grounds of European precedent. The mobile business remains a national market. Policy designed to protect consumers and ensure domestic competition should not be abandoned lightly.

The merger of Three and O2 should be referred back to the UK and given the serious scrutiny it deserves.

[Richard_T]

Quote:

giffgaff will just be gobbled up by Three or sold off.

Unless Telefonica retain ownership and Giff gaff continues to operate as an MVNO on the O2/Three network.

[moox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard_T

Unless Telefonica retain ownership and Giff gaff continues to operate as an MVNO on the O2/Three network.

Isn't it already struggling to make money? Can't see that working out if they no longer even own the network operator too.

[Everything Goes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard_T

Unless Telefonica retain ownership and Giff gaff continues to operate as an MVNO on the O2/Three network.

But Telefonica have been trying to kill it off for the past year anyway by making it uncompetitive

[jabbamk1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Everything Goes

But Telefonica have been trying to kill it off for the past year anyway by making it uncompetitive

GiffGaff have over 1.2m customers. That's a very big number for a MVNO.

[clewsy]

Who is the largest MVNO? Tesco mobile I'm guessing?

[jabbamk1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by clewsy

Who is the largest MVNO? Tesco mobile I'm guessing?

Tesco: >3,5m
Virgin: >3.0m

One interesting thing to note is how Virgin used to be the largest but how Tesco overtook them quite easily. Tesco are focusing a lot more on their mobile division and will soon stop selling other networks in their phone shops in order to push the Tesco brand.

[Everything Goes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbamk1

GiffGaff have over 1.2m customers. That's a very big number for a MVNO.

I wonder if that will start to fall given recent changes?

[enapace]

What that article says about Austria is not due to consolidation at all it's down to 2 factors. One new owner Carlos Slim is hoping to recoup losses from having to divest a lot of his mexico telecom markets. A1 Telekom Austria owns a lot of networks in eastern europe not just Austria so has been increasing prices.

Second the regulator allowed A1 Telekom Austria to buy up the majority of spectrum they control the majority spectrum in all bands from 800 to 2600MHz it's insane. Three had to give up there 2600MHz and weren't allowed to bid on any 800MHz at all. Regulator is not good in Austria at all. Offhand I know A1 has 2x20MHz of 800MHz for instance they have big chunks of all the other bands as well.

Austrian Telecom prices has nothing to do with consolidation even with consolidation Three isn't even the 2nd biggest network in Austria.

[jabbamk1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by enapace

What that article says about Austria is not due to consolidation at all it's down to 2 factors. One new owner Carlos Slim is hoping to recoup losses from having to divest a lot of his mexico telecom markets. A1 Telekom Austria owns a lot of networks in eastern europe not just Austria so has been increasing prices.

Second the regulator allowed A1 Telekom Austria to buy up the majority of spectrum they control the majority spectrum in all bands from 800 to 2600MHz it's insane. Three had to give up there 2600MHz and weren't allowed to bid on any 800MHz at all. Regulator is not good in Austria at all. Offhand I know A1 has 2x20MHz of 800MHz for instance they have big chunks of all the other bands as well.

Austrian Telecom prices has nothing to do with consolidation even with consolidation Three isn't even the 2nd biggest network in Austria.

Hence why I filed it as "opinion".

[clewsy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbamk1

Tesco: >3,5m
Virgin: >3.0m

One interesting thing to note is how Virgin used to be the largest but how Tesco overtook them quite easily. Tesco are focusing a lot more on their mobile division and will soon stop selling other networks in their phone shops in order to push the Tesco brand.

Interesting how quickly Tesco have grown and that is why I was surprised they were not even tempted to enter the ring for O2. I know all about the financial issues, however its clearly a market Tesco have done really well in. I guess if they can keep growing they could soon start offering a threat to 3 in market share. I guess Tesco will be a net winner from the O2 investment in improved 3G and 4G rollout.

I wonder who will win out in the battle over the years between Sainsburys Mobile and Asda Mobile? I know Asda are ahead at the moment however they do seem to have a lot of bad press over it on forums at the moment.