The European Commission (EC) has, following several concessions by the joint company, cleared the proposed merger between Orange UK and T-Mobile UK. Perhaps the most important move was to divest 15MHz of the 60MHz held by both parties in the key 1800MHz spectrum band, which is critical for future superfast LTE Mobile Broadband services.

1800MHz is currently used for 2G (2nd Generation) voice communication services but, under Digital Britain plans, it could be opened up for use by 3G and even future 4G ( LTE ) Mobile Broadband services. The combined operator would have put 84% of this spectrum in the hands of a single company and thus a sacrifice had to be made.

In addition there were also concerns about T-Mobile's network sharing agreement with Three (3) , which was put at risk. Happily the parties managed to conclude a revised agreement that should "secure [3's] position as a competitive force on the market". However not everybody agrees that today’s move, which reduces the total number of UK mobile operators from 5 to 4, will be a good thing.


In light of today’s commitments the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has withdrawn its request to refer the case for review by the UK Competition Authorities. However the mergers chief rivals, O2 and Vodafone UK, still believe that the joint group should have been forced to give up more of its 1800MHz spectrum.