BT speaks out against Vodafone and Three's mobile marriage plans Britain's competition watchdog has published responses to its investigation of the proposed merger of the Vodafone and Three mobile networks, varying from welcoming the move as something that will boost competition, to fears it will have the opposite effect. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in April that it …
"The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in April that it would carry out a more in-depth investigation of the tie-up after warning that the merger could result in increased prices for customers and lower investment in UK mobile networks."
All mergers are designed to lower costs and improve profits. Customers are just an inconvenience that provides the cashflow.
It's worth understanding what happened last time Three was refused a merger. It was with Telefonica and the CMA, with anti-Brexit intent turned it down. Big difference that made. It also made no difference to coverage or tariffs. After the merger was denied it turned into business as usual, the operators coincidentally all put up prices and the not-spots didn't get fixed.
The CMA should allow the Three and Vodafone merger and release a lot of the spectrum - particularly 10Mhz of 1800 Mhz Band 3, to Ofcom's Shared Access Licence. This would free up independent operators - I work for one of them, I have a vested interest - to provide a real rival to the status quo.
>"Vodafone and Three are said to hold as much as 49 per cent of all licensed bands"
Interesting set of infographics here: https://mastdatabase.co.uk/gb/spectrum/
If Ofcom do as they have done in the past, they will require MergeCo to reduce that holding to circa 34 percent, giving spectrum between VMO2 and EE so that they all have roughly 33 percent...
>” The CMA should allow the Three and Vodafone merger and release a lot of the spectrum - … to Ofcom's Shared Access Licence. This would free up independent operators - ….- to provide a real rival to the status quo.”
Missed this first time through.
I think “a lot” would have to be a meaningful amount, to allow real competition to develop, which would indicate potentially 25% of the total spectrum be given to the Shared Access Licence. I wonder if this proposition would result in Vodafone and Three walking away from the merger…
The release of 10MHz of SAL would be a massive boon to small network operators, but there is another benefit - EE/3 partner for mast sharing, as do VF/O2. 3+VF as a combined network would plug quite a few gaps and add a massive capacity layer via 3's contiguous high band holding.
So long as the CMA or OFCOM better enforce the overlap rip-out that happened with TMO/Orange to EE then it should be good for all. Pricing is what pricing is, sometimes if you want a better service, you pay for it. What's not acceptable is when the sum of one plus one equals 1.2 and that is what the EE mergedown got us.
The 3G turn off has shown is that 4G isn't as widespread as first anticipated with many rural areas now back on Edge. A bigger network is a good thing so long as it's actually better.
> The 3G turn off has shown is that 4G isn't as widespread as first anticipated with many rural areas now back on Edge
EDGE, AKA that ancient stopgap designed to squeeze more bandwidth out of the existing *2G* networks? (*)
FFS.
I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that five years after the launch of 5G and twelve years since the launch of 4G, the latter still has insufficient coverage to replace 3G.
Or whether it's that- even knowing all that- they saw fit to allow the telcos to turn the 3G network off anyway thus forcing many *back* onto a 2G-based standard that should already have been an obsolete historical footnote fifteen years ago.
(*) Anyone remember how- despite its "cutting-edge new tech" image- the original 2007 iPhone didn't even support 3G(!), and how O2 scrabbled to retro-fit EDGE onto its 2G network to support all those people who wanted it regardless? Which I assume means they hadn't intended to bother originally- nor likely anticipated that anything like the iPhone *still* wouldn't be 3G. Point being that EDGE was old tech even then.
I DON'T - their "customer service" sucks, "technical support" clueless and I'd say dishonest in the extreme from previous interactions. Great signal either side of a mast, brilliant data rate on one side, walk several hundred metres to the other side (so same distance from mast) same amount of bars and data rate sub 100 kilobits per second....according to them "there is no problem" "oh oh we have detected a problem and I have fixed it right now" "our engineers were out this morning and did maintenance" and more BS....cue contract cancellation and a few days later the coverage map suddenly no longer includes the area on the problematic side of the mast....
Seems there is already consolidation as my Vodafone signal has recently gone non existent and it's not just the trees....methinks they have switched a mast off....that or the neighbour's new stainless steel stack for their wood stove (in a heavily insulated gas heated house no less *spits*) is messing with the signal
3… Nope… never again.
Not since they fucked off Just Like Home Roaming and forcibly binned Grandfathered contracts…. and then repeated it again with Go Roam several years later.
With MVO Sky (Comcast) Mobile Family plan ever since which in general is working.
Fuck 3 and the horse they road in on , all day every day.
… and spaffed off a $130bn bounty when they should have been going global and leveraging their footprint around the world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23933955.amp
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/28/vodafone-sell-verizon-51bn-cash-shares-bonanza
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
