BT coughs £12.5 billion for EE as fourplay frolics pay off BT has agreed terms with the French company Orange and Deutsche Telekom to buy their joint venture EE to form a quad-play superpower. The £12.5bn deal will be a combination of cash and new BT ordinary shares issued to both Deutsche Telekom and Orange. Average cost savings of £360m a year over the next four years will include …
Bearing in mind that my EETV box (which I did not ask for, it just arrived one day between Christmas and the New Year) does not appear to offer any EE specific content, it will probably still work fine when the EE brand disappears, unless they ask for it back (which they can do, according to the Ts&Cs). But I can't see BT wanting it back after the takeover. It'll cost them more than it's value.
I'm a Sky TV customer (for longer than I've been an EE customer) as well, using EE for my mobile, broadband and phone (the Sky broadband offer was pants in my area, and EE offered a significant multi-play discount). The EETV box is a nice to have but not actually used that much device. It's quite nice (4, count them, 4 freeview HD tuners) and can record three programs off-air while watching a fourth. Not got too many add-on services yet (no Amazon Prime, Netflix, ITV Player or 4OD, only a service called Wuaki, which I've not even used the free tokens that came with the box yet.
I think that they sent it to me so that they could claim me as a 4-play customer, in the same way that they offered me a discount to switch from Orange to EE to claim me as a 4G customer, even though there is no 4G provision in my home area!
I just hope that they continue the discounts until then end of my contracted period.
You think EE is bad - you should try BT. Their web interface desperately tries to get you to do anything other than access 'support'. On a rainy day here (when the line gets wet and drops to ~440K both ways) it can take so long to download their shitload of news and gossip that it times out. When you do finally get to click on the appropriate support button it and you get to login there is no longer an option to report a fault! You can sometimes back button and find it if you are lucky, By the time you get to report a fault global warming has dried the line out and all is well again.
There's no LLU here so any other provider still has the BT roadblock and my hindi is coming along beautifully.
Fuuny how these corporate press releases always accentuate all the benefits and positives of a merger/buyout, but never face the reality.
For those of us who currently get a mediocre service from BT, and a mediocre service from Orange/EE all they seem to be interested in is spamming us with more junk mail trying to tell us how wonderful their utopia is. The truth is this merger is enough to push me to the edge and I will now be seriously looking to move both services to an alterative provider thus depriving them of circa £800 a year in revenue. Not that I expect anyone else to actually be better, and I'm sure I'll not be the only one.
Actually, I don't think its funny about the press releases at all.......
@MrWibble: Don't count on it. We've been with Virgin Media cable for approaching seven years. Most of our neighbours are as well (we live on a new estate where external TV aerials are forbidden, so it's the best bet). We continue to receive junk mail from Virgin on a regular basis telling us of their new products.
I salute you.
Having got 4/5 months left on my EE contract, and having not giving one moments thought to staying with them or any BT operated shambles, it leaves me with the choice of Vodafone, O2, or 3.
Vodafone - been with them before. Overpriced for Indian call centers
O2 - been with them before. Were OK but where are they heading?
3 - been with them last time. Hated the Indian call center.
This leaves me with the option to move down the chain to one of the virtual operators.
Virgin Mobile - overpriced useless POS
Tesco Mobile - I have internet with Tesco, it's shit.
LycaMobile - Never heard of them but I know I can ring foreign countries for 1p a minute
Then I stumbled on "The Peoples Network". They're not too badly priced, and plus a percentage of their profit can be given to a "good cause" that I can choose from. What the service is like though I'm not too sure, but I have 4/5 months to find out.
I'll wait to see how they talk it up. From past ventures, the more celestial the choirs of praise and the more effusive the talk of a beautiful relationship, the more likely, as a rocket on bonfire night, to blow apart in sparks - think Philips/Lucent (company song) or - something BT would prefer to forget - their "merger" with AT&T.
What this means
"...that the company has a “strong record in cost transformation”, and that the “synergies are focused within OPEX”"
I mean I speak English, I know what the individual words mean, but the whole seems well....
Does it mean we're going to make a lot of people redundant and sell off a property we can and lease it back?
I'm sure Douglas Adams wrote those lines in "Hitchhikers", but perhaps I'm just counterpointing the surrealism of the underlying metaphor.
That's right. OPEX is the operating expenditure that cannot be turned into capital like wages, governance or anything else that counts as cost. EE are already aggressively driving down OPEX but my dealings with BT in the past shows EE to be total newbies compared to them.
Business contract cancelled, Pac received. Off to Three (Glasgow call centre - business tariff?)
far better deal, business 900 cost £20 a month. EE was £40 for less of everything. Thanks BT for the push I needed to make the 'call'
Before you all flame me for three, there is no Vodaphone or O2 signal where I live.
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