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Vodafone and O2 table bids for T-Mobile

By Barry Collins

Posted on 7 Sep 2009 at 09:20

Both Vodafone and O2-owner Telefonica have lodged bids of around £3.5 billion for the UK arm of T-Mobile.

T-Mobile's German parent company, Deutsche Telekom, is looking to offload the under-performing UK arm of the business. Vodafone and Telefonica are reported to have lodged offers for T-Mobile at the end of last month, with figures of between £3.5bn and £4bn quoted.

A successful bid would make either Vodafone or O2 the runaway market leader in the UK mobile market.

O2 is already the UK's biggest mobile network, with a 27.7% market share (by revenue) according to Enders Analysis. Vodafone is in second place with 24.7%. The assimilation of T-Mobile's 14.9% share would give either a clear lead over the rest of the market.

A combined market share of around 40% would leave either Vodafone or O2 in a considerable position of strength when it comes to negotiating exclusive deals for big ticket handsets such as the iPhone. O2's exclusive contract on the iPhone is reported to end later this year, but a deal with T-Mobile could give the network a massive bargaining chip when it comes to renegotiating with Apple.

Deutsche Telekom is also exploring a third option which would see Orange and T-Mobile merge their UK operations - a deal that would also make the merged pairing Britain's biggest mobile network.

Whatever happens, any deal is likely to arouse the interest of both British telecoms regulator Ofcom and EU competition authorities.

A decision is expected within a matter of weeks.

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User comments

T Mobile Woes

I have a friend who had been with T Mobile for 14 years and negotiated his contract every year. This year they would not do so and so he switched, then weeks later they offered the same contract that he had been asking for but refused to agree to. They must be losing customers like crazy at the moment.

By Amnesia10 on 7 Sep 2009

That's the same reason they lost me a few years ago. I had always been with them cos the customer service was excellent. (you could always understand the support person and they knew what they were doing) but then that started to change and then contract renewals became a nightmare. The final straw was when I could get twice the minutes and texts if I signed up as a new customer instead of just renewing my contract. When I asked if I could do that I was informed that they usually wouldn't do that but they'd make an exception for me but I couldn't keep my existing no.

I asked them could they not port it across and I'd keep the old one going for an extra month and was told that they are not able to port numbers between sims on their network and only if the number comes from another network.

Absolute load of rubbish as I've had this done on Orange since then and I know for a fact that vodafone do this as a standard service as I've worked for companies who used vodafone and we got them to do this all the time.

Needless to say it was goodbye T-Mobile.

By koshthetrekkie on 8 Sep 2009