UK competition watchdog fast-tracks investigation into mega-merger of O2 and Virgin Media The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will subject the proposed merger of Virgin Media and O2 to an investigation to decide whether the combined mega-entity will hurt the market for certain telecommunications-related products. Although Virgin Media and O2 are best known for their consumer-targeted stuff (like TV, …
The outcome for consumers could be interesting. I am not a Virgin customer but they appear to have their fair share of issues dealing with people. I have been with O2 for years and always found them very helpful and easy to deal with. This contrasts with my wife who is on Vodafone that has given endless grief with cocked up billing.
OTOH I'v never had anything but good service from Vodafone (though I've only been with them for 29 years). Get as reliable a signal as any network around my home area, helpful staff when I phone to renew contracts and prices that match any others I've seen advertised (aka existing customer continues to get new customer sweetener discounts). Of course, YMMV.
"BT's at the time market-shaking acquisition of EE (a similar combo of fixed and mobile businesses) was waved through in early 2016"
It would have been difficult for them to have done otherwise. It just restored BT to the position they were in before the idiot BT management (tautology alert) of the time decided they didn't really want a mobile network & floated O2 off.
well that was an acquisition not a merger, so quite different I think.
Also with openreach in BT versus virgin business, on the infraside Liberty is doing little, so there is no synergy or integration to speak of other than customer billing I suppose. I;m not sure billing is a bit consumer competitive selling point. "Best billing in the business, worst coverage." lol
This Vm-O2 is purely investment bank stuff, a leveraged buyout it seems, far more so that BT-EE which at least could be argued was about scale. BT had the equity to buy EE, this is too debt riddled companies opening a joint account, by borrowing on their credit card, which they also opened on the joint account. All that USD, EUR and GBP money printing has to go somewhere.
This really is about making a quick buck, will cripple the merged entity with a ton of non-investment debt. The merged company will be so ill to put up any fight with the competition.
Even three-O2 looked better than this debt burdened shit show. The Libery global purchase already badly Fcked up VM.
Maybe this is one of those Brexit things - ofcom/CMA can say yes to bad deals for the consumer. Far fewer people to "wine and dine" (wink wink) in the CMA now.
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