Three becomes one as Vodafone buys out merger partner

Vodafone has paid £4.3 billion ($5.78 billion) for the remaining 49 percent of VodafoneThree, taking full ownership of the UK's largest mobile operator. The telecoms giant announced that it planned to buy the stake held by Three's former parent, CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings, in May. The acquisition comes just over a year …

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone tried sat services?

Has anyone tried sat services?

[Pirate Peter]

Re: Has anyone tried sat services?

why would you want anything to do with starling / muskrat?

one question

if your calls / text / data traverse starlink satellites owned by space X (an American company) can US law enforcement use the patriot act to snoop on global communications of any mobile operator using them?

I have no trust muskrat or any company he takes and part in or owns, he is to far up trumps arse and only in it for his own profit and monopoly

[RSchune]

Re: Has anyone tried sat services?

So, you wanna duck the FBI's interest in your affairs?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

"targeted synergies."

Knowing that that was written by an expensively educated and over paid executive, can we just bring on the AI apocalypse now please ?

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: "targeted synergies."

That's 1990's MBA Speak 101.

Been there, got the cert and used it to help customers decode the MBA BS that was spouted at every opportunity. AI slop will only make it worse. 200 words instead of 2.

To all those who think that AI as currently implemented is the best thing since sliced bread.... Eat This --->>> see icon

[Gavsky]

Re: "targeted synergies."

Well, you don't want untargeted synergies, trust me. Synergies are tricky buggers at the best of times...

[theblackhand]

Re: "targeted synergies."

"Targeted"? Synergies are cost reductions, while I'm sure some are carefully considered, they inevitably result in the loss of knowledgeable people.

And if the first attempt at shooting oneself in the foot via significant cost reductions is unsuccessful, then the second attempt will likely be just as unsuccessful and lead to a lack of suitable targets for the third attempts and those in charge will have to decide what appendages to target with the subsequent shots...

At which point, your synergies are badly damaged or gone completely.

[Sam 15]

Re: "targeted synergies."

"At which point, your synergies are badly damaged or gone completely."

So what? By that time that expensive senior manager has moved on to stuff up some other company.

Managers can't stand still - it makes them an easy target.

[TeeCee]

Re: "targeted synergies."

Yup. Untargeted synergies just float around synergising stuff at random.

There you are, just getting a coffee and bam, you're synergised. Doesn't bear thinking about.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: "targeted synergies."

… and after building it, will they ‘sale and leaseback’ it too??

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/26/vodafone-standalone-mobile-mast-business-towerco-europe

Other than ‘releasing value for shareholders’ I never understood how Vodafone went from the biggest mobile company in the world - with it’s 45% stake in Verizon sold for $130bn - to a debt laden has been in 6 years , flogging critical assets and businesses …. and then buying Three??

A sad humbling for what could have been the world’s first Global Cell/Mobile phone company with a bit for thought, energy, dynamism and LinkedIn-speak.

[steviebuk]

Sort out

your fucking masts. In town, we hardly get any signal and no signal at all when we go into shops. And at home, nothing. Have to sit downstairs, in front room right by the window to only get one bar. They are shit.

[Sproggit]

The problem we have...

... is that there is so much corruption swirling around Ofcom that the valid point you make will never be addressed.

The mobile operators are almost certainly using a weighted customer-density map to show them where they need coverage - put another way, they will deploy masts where they see from their data capture that their customers spend their time. Even if you are surrounded by their customers, if your neighbours work elsewhere, and don't use their mobiles evenings/weekends, you won't see coverage.

We were told this would never happen, of course. We were told that a combination of competitive market pressure and strict regulatory oversight would ensure that all UK citizens would be assured a minimum level standard in terms of availability and performance.

But just to give you an idea of how completely corrupt Ofcom are... think about your network performance [mobile or physical line]. You're charged a fee for a product that claims to offer you speeds "up to" a quoted headline value. Which means, of course, that you will never see anything like that performance. If you paid for a litre of fuel at a petrol station and got 990cc, then Weights & Measures would close the forecourt. If you bought 1kg of carrots from a supermarket and the scales actually told you that 990g were a kg, ditto.

Because that would be *fraud*.

Yet apparently, because it's a "whole new thing" [sorry, Chris Harris] the telecoms industry is able to get away with providing you sub-standard service and charging you full price for it.

"How is this possible?" I hear you ask.

Simples. Odcom are corrupt as f### and have more than enough former industry employees in their management - who will continue to use the "revolving door" between the regulator and the entities it regulates. Our MP's on the relevant Committee's are offered fat Non-Executive Directorships to look the other way.

[an.other_tech]

Re: The problem we have...

Fully with you on this !

Let's take a quick glance at FTTP, for domestic customers.

You want a 1Gb fibre service, both up and downstream ?

Sure.....but we can only guarantee 750Mb.

Erm. Okaaay.

That was 2 years ago.

This year, 450Mb

Hang on. Thats even less.

What's going on ??

Still, you've got to understand that the electrons and photons aren't playing ball, that fibre op cable gets affected by such things as heat and vibration.

Oh no !!

Oh yes.

Now add in that the major suppliers (in my area) such as BT, Sky, Virgin, will happily also sell you up to 1Gb service. Great you say, but that's downstream.

Upstream you're looking at around 10% of that.

And that's for FTTP. The same as other, smaller providers, who are using someone else's infrastructure. e.g MS3

Yet they want more money for that service.

Granted it's a domestic one, so you're sharing with your neighbours on whatever network they're on too.

Much like the days of ADSL over copper.

Nope, it's all a fix, we've been bamboozled for far too long with data services.

[EddyM]

Re: Sort out

Is that Vodafone or Three? It sounds like my experience when I tried to join Vodafone sometime in the mid-late 2000s - barely any signal at home (South London) or anywhere I visited, maybe a tiny bit of 2G if I was lucky. I couldn't believe how bad it was.

I think at that point I'd already been with O2 (on 2/2.5G), then T-Mobile (pre-EE) on 3G, and then after that Three 3/4G for the last decade or so, and they all worked fine almost everywhere.

I think I did try out a SIM card of theirs again once since then, and was even more surprised to find they didn't appear to have improved at all in all that time. Still barely useable, whereas over the time I was with T-Mobile my signal indoors at home went from just about ok to actually rather good.

So reading this article, my face was like: [insert grimacing emoji that apparently isn't supported here]. It feels like even just the name being changed to Vodafone would somehow tank my coverage.

I don't really understand how they've managed to keep the company going for so long at that rate, or make enough money to buy out another entire provider that actually works.

[Nastybirdy]

Time to move.

Ah well. Time to find another mobile provider. I'll never do business with Vodafone (or Vodafone in a trenchcoat) after they hounded us for YEARS for supposed non-payment of a bill...after my wife left them, with nothing owing. They tried to send us to debt collectors, they emailed, they sent letters, they called us. I lost track of the number of people I talked to trying to get this sorted and it took the threat of legal action to get them to back off.

[steviebuk]

Re: Time to move.

Tesco Insurance did same to me over 10 years ago now. Paid of car insurance in full. Then few months later claimed I owed money. Called, they apologised, sent letter to confirm. Few months later they did it all over again. Eventually they sent another letter saying they were sending debt collectors.

Called them, got out through to the fuck whit department that kept fucking up. Woman answered with attitude like she didn't want to be there. I explained, she said oh and she'd sort the issue out. That was it. No apology, nothing.

I complained and I think they offered either £20 or £50 for their fuck up. I deserved more than that but couldn't be bothered to take further.

Despite being over 10 years ago, I keep the letters in case they start again.

[Lee D]

Re: Time to move.

I still have the original letters, in post-marked envelopes, from when a car insurer decided to retro-actively cancel my car insurance "for non-payment" despite that being news to both myself and the bank (who confirmed that the normal DD had been taken at the normal time by the company).

I got several letters from them in quick succession. Literally sent me one letter dated two weeks in the past (in an envelope postmarked the day before) to tell me it was cancelling my insurance for non-payment from a date... that had already passed in the previous week. Cited non-payment despite the fact that I also received from them a letter telling me explicitly that my payment had been taken successfully and the phrase "nothing more to pay". Which was dated the day before the above first letter.

Cue a LONG series of arguments with them about it not being possible, until I provided both "document reference numbers" (huge long /'d numbers on the bottom of each letter) which quite literally prompted an "Okay, hold on.... Oh. Oh!" from the person on the other end.

Basically they had cocked up, taken my payment as normal (confirmed with the bank), send me a letter to tell me that it was paid up, then waited two weeks, then sent a letter claiming that the payment had not gone through (it had) and that they were going to cancel my insurance, and then they sent another telling me they HAD cancelled my insurance because I'd ignored that letter. Despite the fact that the letters had all arrived together with the same post-mark date.

Apparently falsifying dates in those letters is a bit of a no-no, especially when those dates don't reflect reality, and when one is in the past and one is in the future but both got posted the same day. They absolutely shat themselves when they finally found all the letters that they'd sent me "on the system". It was immediately escalated and I got a lot of begging phone calls from, effectively, the top bod in that company asking me not to report them, that this could have left me marked as uninsured through no fault of my own, that it breached all their industry regulations, and please please don't tell anyone. I said if ANYTHING flags up for me driving uninsured on any day where I was SUPPOSED to have been covered, they'd be in court.

Couldn't trust them after that, cancelled the policy anyway (and got immediate confirmation of that, a big refund, and a letter from them clarifying certain things, without an actual admission of guilt, but so that I could present it in court if it ever came up), and about a year or so later they went bust.

Glad I held onto the letters because about 2 years later, their administrators tried to chase me for a debt of exactly the amount I was refunded and I told them where to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Time to move.

If you were certain in your case, I would have relished seeing them in court. Judges take a very dim view of stupid companies making specious legal claims and bullying customers.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Great

vodaphones 'coverage' with 3's customer 'service'

Because I seriously doubt it will be the other way around

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Great

It won't matter either way. We all know the outcome is going to be shit.

At least this deal didn't involve Beardie-whatever, Crapita, Fujshitsu, Ryanair or Pissy World. Well, not yet...

[Andy Non]

Re: Great

The initial saving will be on making half the customer service personnel redundant, shortly followed by replacing the remaining customer service staff with AI. However, to give it that "genuine Vodafone customer service feel" the AI will speak with a heavy Mumbai accent.

[xyz123]

And complete erasure of previous networks identity in 3...2...1...

[xyz123]

In order to continue the fantasic Three experience, we've turned the signal strength on ALL our cellphone towers down to 1/5th

[Doctor Syntax]

So we're back to more or less where we were 40 years ago. The former BT Mobile/Cellnet & VoodooFone. Just the two.

[Anonymous Coward]

… wel apart from Virgin Media/O2 (the former BT Cellnet business plus a gaggle of formerly bankrupt cable companies) I guess yes.

[Gavsky]

Different day, same result: the consumer gets fewer choices; there'll probably be job losses...um, 'synergies'.

[Apprentice of Tokenism]

The free market will regulate itself they said. There will be more competition and the customers will benefit from the competition they said.

[Martin an gof]

Upvoted, but it must be noted that it's not an entirely free market. The frequencies available for mobile services are very tightly regulated and the number of operators allowed in the market was set by government policy. Ignoring ad-hoc systems prior to "1G", two to start with, four when 2G came along and additional frequencies were allocated (ignorring Rabbit), a fifth when 3G started, and that company (Three) was given a head start in the market in recognition of the dominance of the established networks. Consolidation back down to three strikes me as entirely predictable given the investments needed to keep things running.

My main concern is that Smarty will be nuetered (Voxi never had similar value plans) and therefore Gifgaf will have less incentive to match low-price deals. With something stupid like 90% of MVNOs using EE's network, what competition there is looks even more like window dressing.

M.

[MachDiamond]

"it must be noted that it's not an entirely free market."

Most utilities are like that as well. There isn't room for a dozen physical electricity suppliers, half a dozen water companies, etc. They wind up being natural monopolies and need a new business classification that treats them a different way than other businesses. In practice, that means limitations all over the place. Caps on executive salaries (total compensation), no sponsoring sports teams/stadiums nor any political activity. I'd even go as far as prohibiting the issuance of stock. The electric company shouldn't be looking to maximize value for the shareholder, but for the customer. If those companies are leaving infrastructure to rot in order to chase money, that becomes a national security issue. Look what happened in Los Angeles when incompetent management led to a vast swath of homes and businesses being burned to the ground for lack of water. From there they've dropped the ball in recovery. The only way to get a permit to rebuild is to apply to construct the exact same thing that had been on the plot. Otherwise, it's the slow lane and maybe you'll get word back in the next 12 months, if you are lucky.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don’t know… Lebara as a huge MVNO uses Vodafone as do Talk Mobile, Asda Mobile, Voxi … and Smarty, ID Mobile and Honest Mobile via 3.

New marketplace disrupters Revolut, Monzo and Klarna Mobile (via Gigs as the MaaS? - ‘MVNO as a service’ I guess super provider) also use Vodafone MVNO.

[Martin an gof]

The numbers have changed since last I looked but according to Wikipedia there are currently 10 MVNOs on EE, none of which belongs to EE itself, three on O2, one of which is O2-owned Giffgaff, four on Three, one of which is Three-owned Smarty and four on Vodafone, one of which is Voda-owned Voxi.

Counting only the independent MVNOs then, that's 10 on EE and 8 elsewhere. Obviously nowhere near the 80% I mentioned but still an interesting imbalance. When I first looked at this – with the aim of diversifying the family's host networks following a holiday with barely any usable coverage as it transpired we were all using EE* – firstly there were a lot more MVNOs from which to choose (though some were very small or niche) and secondly there were genuinely lots more on Orange (now EE) than any other network. I think two of our phones moved to The Phone Co-Op because at that point TPC was connected with both EE and O2, and phones could roam between the two. This didn't last long and a year or two later TPC went EE-only.

*we knew at least one other network was available as rather than saying "No Network", the phones said "Emergency calls only"

M.

[Missing Semicolon]

Lebara

Is a Voda MVNO. The deals are very good. I presume they will go too.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Lebara

"Is a Voda MVNO. The deals are very good. I presume they will go too."

Not necessarily. The MVNO's are often separate entities that lease bandwidth. I've tried the red-headed step child divisions of the major brands and they suck like their parents. Every time I've switched, it's been due to frustration with customer service, or the lack thereof. The service I use now is they least expensive I've found and I haven't had any issues that would require trying out their customer service. Sadly, all of their specials are only for new customers so I might want to go someplace else for another number and take advantage of somebody else's new customer discount. Nobody in marketing has thought that selling more services to existing companies might be a good tactic rather than tempting them to buy elsewhere. If they were all the same, I'd happily swap annually to get the best deals. The sad fact is that most have very poor customer service and the people that they have know little about anything much.

[G R Goslin]

My sympathies.....

My sympathies lie with the customers. I was with Voda on three occasions, and, on leaving each, vowed never to return. I left Three, as soon as I learned that they were going to merge with Voda, but not before I'd noticed that Three's once excellent Customer Service, was already being dismantled

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My sympathies.....

“Three’s once excellent customer service” ??

I don’t recognise that concept?! Was it pre-fucking over of ‘Roam like at Home’ customers ? … significantly pre-Vodafone merger?

[ComicalEngineer]

Corruption and collusion

You will note that all the large providers have the same price hikes.

"Your bill will increase by X%" where X is a number > inflation plus and additional amount (3.9% springs to mind).

Anyone notice that the number was / is exactly the same regardless of provider? Dare I say "Price fixing"? Which is, of course illegal (if you get caught). Not that OFCOM could catch a fish in a barrel given a large net and half a stick of dynamite.

Ofcom waded in and said that price rises must be "clearly in pounds and pence" rather than a percentage figure "to make things clearer for the customer".

So the phone companies simply added on a number larger than the expected largest inflation figure plus their additional 3.9% and hey presto, your annual rise is even larger than before. Again you will notice that the price rise numbers are remarkably similar for every provider.

Once again the law of unintended consequences rises from the deep.

OFCOM? Don't make oi larf. OFFUCK more likely. Clueless, toothless and in cahoots with the telecos.

[low_resolution_foxxes]

Re: Corruption and collusion

Yeah, it does look like a major telco basically bought out the cheaper competition, and continues to purge the cheap competitors business entity, so the whole industry can gorge on more expensive plans.

Alas, that said I am quite fond of sim-only deals and cheap Xiaomi phones with EE at the moment.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: Corruption and collusion

That’s fine, Lebara, Lyca, Revolut Mobile (£12.50 unlimited at home and EU/US roaming), Klarna mobile (£15 unlimited at home and global data roaming) on 30 day rolling contracts etc ….and all don’t have annual price rises … so feet voted with.

3 of the above 4 MVNO on Vodafone.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: Corruption and collusion

Thank-you auto-downvoting bot !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

" This best-in-class infrastructure will deliver better connectivity for our customers up and down the country, help drive the UK's digital economy, and deliver long-term value for our shareholders.""

Translated: "Blaablaa BS and deliver long-term value for our shareholders."

Literally: More profit is the sole reason to buy competitors out and it always ends up to either monopoly or a cartel.

[jpennycook]

They're not interested in profit. They're interested in debt, and specifically debt repayments. There's no tax on debt repayments, unlike with dividends.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

"A spokesperson told us the company was happy with its multi-brand strategy and had no plans to change the VodafoneThree name or drop Three, VOXI, SMARTY, or Talkmobile."

I tried to put that horseshit into Google Translate, but if didn't offer "Business Bullshit" as an input language.

If your job depends on any of those brands, I reckon you've got 3 months...

[RSchune]

I guess these mega mergers (and investments ;-) will mean there will be no more notspots, flaky networks, lousy customer support, and that 5G will become the standard. Muaaahahahaha.

[Anonymous Coward]

>This best-in-class infrastructure will deliver better connectivity for our customers up and down the country,

It cannot possibly get any worse, can it. Mobile coverage in the UK has been a pile of steaming crap for years. VF should be ashamed. Made worse by the 5G roll out that has been completely botched by all the UK operators, just like all the 3G and 4G holes in the network that were never addressed.

5G data in central London that actually works? Forget it. You want to use your phone on the move, like on a train or in a car? Forget it. In your home? Nope. In a busy train station? Noo too much congestion sorry. Working cell handover on a major road? Good luck with that.

I travel a bit so I can compare. I know in the UK mobile is very definitely thoroughly broken with no sign of improvement. We're definitely through the paper folks. The operators need to be punished but OFCOM which will never act as they're a corrupt quango regularly demonstrating they are fully in cahoots with the operators.

[Bbuckley]

How ironic that telecomms is moving towards satellite broadcast delivery but TV is moving away from satellite towards broadband unicast/multicast internet. My experience with Freeview/internet is shit - you need a continuous massive bit rate for it to work, especially for HD (no sign of when 4k will work). Broadcast is inherently much more scalable.