Orange & T-Mobile confident of EC approval for merger (UK)

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Rapid regulatory approval from European Commission is expected by Orange and T-Mobile for a merger of the UK mobile phone businesses, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom.

France Telecom’s Orange UK and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK are planning to combine to form Britain’s largest mobile operator, with 29.5m customers.

The number of UK mobile network operators in UK will be reduced from five to four after this transaction as Telef³nica’s O 2 UK subsidiary will be overtaken by the combined Orange/T-Mobile entity.

The matter of concern for the regulators is the fact that whether the three telecom operators, which has never reported a pre-tax profit, could compete effectively after consolidation in the mobile market.