OFT seeks to examine Orange/T-Mobile deal

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: European Commission has been asked by Office of Fair Trading (OFT), Britain’s consumer watchdog to let it examine the planned merger of the UK arms of France Telecom’s Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile, raising prospects of at least a delay to any deal.

A 50-50 joint venture was agreed between T-Mobile and Orange grabbing top spot with a market share of about 37 percent and at the same time reducing the number of mobile phone operators in the country to four from five.

According to T-Mobile UK Managing Director Richard Moat, the company was hoping that the proposed joint venture would be examined by regulators in Brussels, as scrutiny in the UK could take much longer. The investigations in the UK would delay the merger until 2011 which would not be in anyone’s interest.