www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The ACCC has finally approved the Vodafone and 3 merger in Australia. 3 and Vodafone will form 50/50 joint venture which will come to be known as Vodafone-Hutchison Australia (VHA).
The process of approval has been long as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took time to investigate the operations of both companies in detail. After which ACCC came to two conclusions 1) that market competition wouldn’t be damaged by this merger and 2) that the two companies probably couldn’t sustain a decent level of investment without it.
The combined subscriber base of the operators is claimed to be 6 million. The operators’ main aim is to retain the quality of service of both the brands. Vodafone-Hutchinson Australia will be the third largest operator in the country, behind Optus and Telstra.

According ACCC Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel: Ongoing investments are needed to meet the increased customer demand for bandwidth-hungry data services, including mobile broadband. In this respect, the ACCC considers that mobile voice and data services will continue to converge in the future”