back to article Hue, not Three, could be Hutchison’s crown jewel as MNO model morphs

The European Commission has two months to decide whether to allow the takeover of Telefonica’s O2 UK arm by CK Hutchison, owner of 3UK, and if it does, what conditions will be imposed. One of the most likely demands will be for the merged entity to divest some of its infrastructure for a new entrant, or at least to earmark a …

  1. bon_the_one

    -

    I have never seen such liberal use of '-' in an article. I gave up reading as it be-came so an-noying...

    1. Greg D

      Re: -

      I count like 10 or something. But it does look like some of those are typos, or speech-to-text fails.

      Doesn't really spoil the reading.

      1. Cynic_999

        Re: -

        It's a re-formatting issue that happens when software automatically inserts hyphens to split words for better presentation in a narrow column of text, but they are not removed when re-formatted for a wide page. The failure is not however in the software, it is in the (lack of) proof-reading and editing.

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  2. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT

    Why is a 3/O2 merger liable to be blocked when BT is being allowed to take over EE and thus acquire an even bigger monopoly on telecoms as a whole? [You do not have to have 100% of a market to be a monopoly, only enough to distort competition.]

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: BT

      BT prior to taking over EE, was just an MVNO that used the EE network, so it was perceived as not changing the number of MNO's in the UK. Three and O2 are MNO's and hence their merger would reduce the number of MNO's by one. For the purposes of competition, only their mobile operations were taken into consideration.

      It is also interesting to note that whilst the BT takeover of EE was a UK domestic matter, the Three/O2 deal is an EU matter.

  4. Roland6 Silver badge

    Who owns what?

    So do Three own their infrastructure or have they moved it into CK Hutchison?

    I'm a little confused, as it would seem that it makes a lot of sense for Hutchison to own the infrastructure and to have Three as an MVNO on it.

    1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

      Re: Who owns what?

      Three is currently owned by Hutchison, and owns and operates it's own network, rather than being an MVNO.

      As such, if and when they merge with O2, they won't merely be transferring their bandwidth rental requirements to the O2 network, they will actually be merging their existing network with O2s, and closing down a lot of cells as a result. This, in my experience, is not necessarily a good thing for the consumer.

      When I joined T Mobile, they had just started the process of merging with Orange, so both networks were fully operational, and when they enabled cross network roaming, I got a very good signal wherever I went.

      After a couple of years, they had shut down a lot of cells on both networks, and my signal at work went from excellent to barely usable where it was useable at all.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

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